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

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.

First Project: First Antietam Set

“Old Simon” at Antietam National Cemetery.

Twelve Easy Prints

Projects.

Aesthetically: internally consistent.

Thematically: coherent.

I’ve spent decades making pretty pictures, technically stunning pictures, sentimental pictures, but this late afternoon, one that marks the end of a long process over time, is the first on which I’ve printed (completed, done) a set of a dozen coherent, internally consistent interpretations of one of America’s great historic landscape: Antietam National Battlefield Park.

I’m having a drink over it, rum and coke, this still warm July afternoon, windows open, fans running, Joe Pass (“Bernie’s Tune”) coming down from a cloud.

Is this how it feels to have something finished, I wonder.

Must be.

Manhattan or Venice Beach or some little spot off the road, Cumberland Valley, twenty minutes driving north of all that death, glory, sacrifice, the announcement in blood of the beginning of the end of slavery (and “separate but equal”, truth to be told) in the U.S.A., it’s the same thing.

Although not quite a wrap — I could stand to print the set a few more times.

In any case, I have something to ship.

I’ve a minimum in mind.

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The HP B9180 survived this round!

Specification: HP B9180 with the Vivera inks on A3+ (13×19-inch) InkPress Fine Art Matte, minimally bordered and at the bottom numbered by volume and print order (left), and signed (right).

Production Run: I’m tempted not to do another set!  However, I’ve in mind placing six to a dozen sets, no more, of this project.

If the HP printer fails (beyond fast repair) on any subsequent order, then I’ll print on the Epson 3880 with the Ultrachrome K3 (with “Vivid Magenta”) inks.