Misc., Spring 2012

Misc., Spring 2012, originally uploaded by James S. Oppenheim.

My studio will scrape up the dollars for a few more HP B9180 Vivera Ink cartridges, and it may even prove ambitious enough to get into that machine and produce the most luscious, perfect, and permanent prints from images such as this one, taken “on-the-fly”, hand-held, with a point-and-shoot.

I need some places to go now.

I need a few farms, gardens, and parks, public or private . . . lonely beautiful spaces with much for eye and mind.

Click here to view additional photographs from the series..

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2011-12-31 – Hagerstown – MD – Fairgrounds and Pangborn Parks

2011-12-31 – Hagerstown – MD – Fairgrounds and Pangborn Parks, originally uploaded by James S. Oppenheim.

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.

Click here to view additional photographs from the series.

Fairgrounds Park – Magic Hour – 11/7/2011

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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Black Box — All That Glitters

Mikasa Vase

 Fenton Green “Vasoline” Glass Slipper

 Tashira Shoten Teapot

 Turtle Riding Imp

 Noritake Teacup

 ”Nebula” Paperweight by Glass Eye Works of Seattle

 Lucite Paperweight With Gulls

 Obsideon Stone Earring

 

Victorian Amber Crystal Doorknob

 Handblown Inkwell

For some time now, I’ve enjoyed working with one lamp, usually with a “snoot” on it, and a black velvet pad inside what the industry calls a “light tent”.  A circular polarizing filter on the lens cuts and controls reflections, as does the geometrical relationship betweeen light source, object, and camera, and the rest involves a reasonable positioning of the object, choice of exposure, and judicious post-processing.

Lighting: Alien Bees B800 with 10-percent grid or snoot plus, here and there, a sheet of diffusion paper. 

Camera: Nikon D2x with either a 60mm f/2.8 Nikkor or an old 35-105mm f/3.3-4.5 AF Nikkor.  Both lenses feature strong “macro” capabilities.

Surfaces: black velvet mat and plexiglass.

The winter has brought me a neighbor who collects and trades through the local and national auction markets.  Some things he keeps and some he sells, but whether to the box or curio cabinet, one may appreciate both the artistry and craft involved in the creation of exquisite objects and observe–much harder to see–the love of the tangible that quietly sustains markets for them. 

Every Day An Adventure

Barn visible off of Longmeadow Road on the parcel south of The Good Shepherd Ministries, Jan. 2, 2010.

As I feel I should, I’m picking up the pace on shooting, in general, and getting out in the surrounding rural landscape, in particular, and following up with greater involvement in tonal iteration and in computer-generated illustration.

I’ve fiddled with the above in color too:

My photographs have a sound architecture and Nikon-driven veracity as regards the representation of the real.  However, one wants to push at the interior seams of the digital envelope, punching up the impact on the way and, sigh, struggling to avoid just that touch too much of magenta.

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First Day 2010 – Leitersburg Vicinity

I’ll have to return and check the street signs, but this is certainly farmland at dusk in the Leitersburg vicinity north of Hagerstown, Maryland (Jan. 1, 2010).

Taken at about the same time but in the opposite direction, there are some enjoyable ways of going about a “day into night” transition with a digital file.  So done. 

Among resolutions this year is that to delve more deeply into Photoshop-based retouching and illustration.

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The Park in Winter

Location: Pangborn Park, Hagerstown, Maryland, December 30, 2009.

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Distractions o’ the Season

 
This is looking a tough winter, expensive for heating, not too thrilling for the Mustang.  It may nonetheless have its charms, chief among them the same icy weather and snow that transforms the landscape and lends charm to the season for those who have put in somewhere and find kitchen, library, and livingroom, which here features for a home theater a very good HDTV with 7.1 surround sound,  quite cozy. 

I’ve had other and more adventurous seasons, but with less opportunity for fine art photography.  The photograph above: three minutes, if that, with the Avon Lady decorating the door of a home in full Christmas Season swing. 

 This year? 

I don’t know where I may go or when, but I know (when the roads are clear), I may drive at will and put in too on some Main Street with a decent restaurant or several. 

Before I get back to that feckless wunderlust, however, it seems I, in keeping with other men in their mid-50′s, must do something about my “fitness level”, which across three years of sitting on my butt at this computer, enough so to bill myself a bona fide “mouse potato”, has aged me far into my early 70′s. 

Fortunately, here in the 50′s such disasters may be reversed. 

Whether before or with the photography–nothing like long walks in the countryside for health–it looks like I will be walking, jogging, running, and bicycling (but not this year cross-country skiing) to throw into reverse the ravages of an overwhelmingly sedentary lifestyle.

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Antietam NBP – Roulette Farm, Horizontal, Fall 2009

Antietam NBP - Roulette Farm, Fall 2009.

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