What a gorgeous light with which to end the year, and also a good way to end it, i.e., with a long walk around a now familiar old park. For 2012: into the neighborhoods for more Americana (and historic architecture) and, possibly, people by way of old fashioned street shooting.
Fairgrounds Park – Magic Hour – 11/7/2011, originally uploaded by James S. Oppenheim.
From just a little earlier this year, but certainly worth a brag. The series within the set involving branches and the moon is available via Fine Art America’s print-on-demand service: http://james-oppenheim.artistwebsites.com/ — Enjoy!
Click here to view additional photographs from the series..
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My firm’s old main web presence — http://www.communicating-arts.com — has cost me a bundle ($35 per month) over the years, and although it says “I can do this and that and a few other things too,” it costs more than it should today, and yet . . . it’s set up and it tells the truth: camera, mind, and language (also guitar and voice) — then art, communicating, and entertainment product — I’m still pretty damn good!
I’ve been thinking of contributing to the web’s general “link rot” and migrating the web not only to a less expensive hosting service but with a new design altogether, but, sheesh, we’re not talking about all that much of a difference over the course of a year, and I still have great flexibility with what I call its “main stage”.
The “CA Main Web” is a part of my ante on that boundless poker table we call business, and not only am I in but in with the most interesting set of cards ever–more portals for showing off wares; more social share sites for . . . sharing the experience; perhaps too, more experience, or sufficient, finally, in basic business and the routines involved in scouting and scoping work, setting a bid rate, contract type, and minimums, and scheduling to market quietly to the best effect.
That old main web site needs its little bit of attention, and it’s going to get it–a few additions, a few edits, but not a new look: after all these years, it still works, and, for the most part, I still like it!
Late fall, early winter, into the holiday season, cooler weather, rains and snows — all that: the very best time for playing and listening to music.
I haven’t wanted to link the avocations, enthusiasms, and vocations, but it should be no secret that I’ve been playing music since I was a little iddle boy and never quite quit playing out — just coming close for ten years while dancing evenings at the Cancun Cantina in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Now moved to Hagerstown on the eastern edge of the state’s panhandle, I’ve gotten into music circles and open mics, and lately: a gig!
I don’t think the meaning of “a gig” changes all that much on the way past 16 to an equally perturbing 60 (wait: I’m not THAT close to that, yet, but four years close — that’s hard to believe).
Musicians know this: you’re as likely to feel as proud of whatever the bar hands you — and whether or not the room was empty or packed — as you have ever felt about earning a buck at anything else.
True?
Good. We understand one another.
Thanks to the two guys who just happened to walk into a restaurant mid-evening and find a guy with a “beautiful voice” playing guitar on a bar stool, a treat, I hope.
And thanks to music buddies David Dishneau and Joe Kuhna — pretty good players and singers themselves — for coming out after an evening jam session for drinks, good sound, and, so I also hope, good company.
Venue: Georgia Boy Cafe, 325 Virginia Avenue, Hagerstown, Maryland. Next appearance: Tuesday, December 13, 2011, from around 7 p.m. to somewhere between 10 and 11, weather (ice free) conditions willing for me and Mustang.
If one finds himself found on any given day, it’s probably natural regretting so much time spent running around lost, or, in my case, working on many things “in parallel” as the geeks might say, and waking up to look back (while still looking forward) on a remarkable trove of photographs, songs, and assorted writings around the web.
One may wake up any given morning and see the spread, a veritable Bonanza of a ranch in the development of local relationships and a global commnicating presence involving many individuals and organizations. There may come with that one additional startling thought: what seemed like the middle of life or even something approaching an end turns out to have actually become a beginning.
Fine Art America: I’ve started raising my prices for print-on-demand art, feeling that the value of the art should exceed printing and framing costs by quite a bit–or else buy the framing, put it up on the wall, and forget about the art altogether. In addition to the bid for “a little respect”, lol, I’m returning to printing with HP’s archival Vivera inks using the beast that squats on the work table across from my workstation, the famed B9180 printer that serves up exquisite prints (ask my music buddies about that) when the planets have aligned and the software has found its happy place and conceded to work.
Georgia Boy Cafe, Hagerstown, Maryland: There really is “no business like show business”–I, speaking as musician or singer and songwriter, have got a room one night a week at this south end soft spot for cold beer, expert bartending in addition, and generous portions of the most comforting of comfortable southern cuisine. See you Tuesday night between 7 and 10 p.m. — what a cool night to let someone else fix the drinks and cook and still send you back home in time for beddy-by and work the next day.
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“. Locating a tract of land in the largely-undeveloped northeastern section of Hagerstown, they began clearing ground in 1915 , and the first building – still in use today – was completed in 1916 .” — Mike Yengling, “Pangborn.doc”, n.d. — “Behind its last remaining wall, the former Pangborn Corp. building on Pangborn Boulevard in Hagerstown has been reduced to rubble.” Herald Mail, December 7, 2010.
Further background: www.pangborngroup.com/Brands/Pangborn/History.aspx
I’m bound and determined to get in some traveling as snow season clears off, and with that may walk and shoot more “industrial” and industrial history. The old structures have their stories, and while hard to believe, no matter how substantial or long planted on the landscape, they may and often enough do come down to make way for redevelopment.
Click here to view additional photographs from the series..
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Sunday, March 6, 2011 — heavy rain. A day indoors, a few minutes looking out the window, waiting, gathering . . . .
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The studio has incredible capabilities this year as regards “capture” and processing. Tonight’s adventure brought out of the closet my 80-200mm Nikkor, not exactly a telescope but fair enough for fast work beneath a full moon.
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A human sees a bright full moon above a scrim of fast moving clouds, white where thin, dark where thick; film and digital sensors or substrates see the same a little differently. This has the look of astrophotography, but it’s very much earthbound and all the more ethereal for it.
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For market, I’ve committed to “data mining” my slide archives, a lifetime of ambition channeled into casual and often unpredictable opportunities.
Thank God I got out now and then.
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