Category Archives: Artist's Journal

J. S. Oppenheim — All Together (Another WordPress Blog)

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J. S. Oppenheim — All Together (Another WordPress Blog)

Music: I’m short on rigging for it, but have been out playing music real good for money (for once) for about nine months, and that’s going to continue.  There will be a compact high-end PA system in my near future, and that will join the Mustang, guitar, and gig bag (mics, toys, wires) in getting me to private parties and, so I hope today, more bars and restaurants.

Photography: I’ve the challenge of placing the “Antietam Set” and perhaps reinvigorating the avocation and profession as energy and time have been sloughed into online intellectual life — I’ve had a wild ride along the crests of the Islamic Small Wars and the Middle East Conflict, and only a part of that participation would be indicated by the posts at Oppenheim Arts & Letters: Facebook has turned out the great battlespace and time suck (away from the fine and lively arts) in that realm, although one may add in the extensive reading associated with such an endeavor.

I know where my time has gone.

I just don’t know what I’ve gotten out of it!

In any case, for once, typing here from a staycation I’m calling “Summer Camp 2012” — me and “Kramer” . . . we go way back for this sort of thing — I feel for the first time in my life  . . . all here.

No question I’ve been struggling with writing, music, and photography for some time, but never quite so out in the open nor so known, even if the standard involves old friends who have popped up on Facebook or my few acquaintance and friends (and fans) around town.

So I have started a new blog, rather experimental as an intimate journal and showcase, a place, perhaps, to be found now that I am lost, albeit, for once, more fully present than I have been in a lifetime.

Gig Snaps + Fireworks

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I would like to tell you how hungover I am, but cannot, for I am only a little partied out.

🙂

And getting over it with coffee bean from Nicaragua.

However, if I weren’t fighting “Dunlap’s Disease” (as in, “honey, my belly done lapped over my belt!”), this would be fine morning hour for a cold beer.

Gig Snaps –> “If I’m to perform — guitarist, vocalist, singer/songwriter — I may bring a camera; if I bring a camera. what I shoot around the gig goes here” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/23673974@N04/collections/72157626640831218/).

So it goes, but here I may remove the “I may bring a camera” part, for the high-end point-and-shoot Lumix Lx5 fairly assures I will have at least that camera with me.   

Greg Trumpower picking a tune out in the wilting heat of the late Fourth of July afternoon, 2012, Hagerstown, Maryland.

Greg Trumpower has been knockin’ at rockabilly and Americana in music for decades.  Retired from writing mortgages for Wells Fargo, he’s had more time for house, garden, and music (http://www.reverbnation.com/gregtrumpower), and every Fourth of July, he’s hosted a Home Concert and Block Party, now fairly well attended and with a terrific locaton for watching the “North End” Hagerstown Fireworks.

Dave Violet (L) and Greg Trumpower (R) pick one.

Greg’s friend Dave Violet has a fine ear and plays well, but as others of our cohort do between age, economy, and fate, he’s been struggling with health and house and here has borrowed Greg’s old Gibson, a little hard to play, stiff action, so Dave says.  Pay him no mind on that — he’s very smooth and jazzes it up as if the old flat top had been built and setup just for him.

Finale – Fourth of July — Hagerstown, Maryland 2012.

Not bad for a hand-held point-and-shoot!

Well, it’s colorful. 

Technically, hand shake and fire in motion may have conspired for effect. 

It has been very cool working in three arts and along multiple parallel career tracks, but when one gets “inside” the less visible machinery and methods of an avenue of expression, it becomes very difficult managing (alone) each art (or research) system: I’d rather have recorded the fireworks with the D2x on a tripod, but . . . outside . . . public party . . . in town . . . Mustang parked a block away . . . chair and gig bag (day travel base camp) slung over my shoulder and guitar case in hand — one system per mission, please.

Of course, as all in production now — film, music, photography — locations come with their own package of encouragements by way of amenity, convenience, and security, so perhaps I will find my way to another house party but out in the countryside with ample parking and other music-supporting and photography-encouraging features.

We shall see!

In the meantime, enjoy my memory of my town’s fireworks 2012.

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Playin’ Down at the Georgia Boy Cafe

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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.

Black Box — All That Glitters

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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.