Tag Archives: journal

Posting Like Crazy — At the Other Place

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Fountain, Tudor Place, Georgetown, Washington, D.C., July 2008http://jsoppenheim.com/

I embarked on a rebuild of the studio’s main computer last month, and now with momma and all of her attached children happily sucking down electricity, I’ve had to approach recovering from backups all the data — business administrative, personal, photographic — accumulated since the initial build in 2007.

In the “digital imaging” arena, revisiting some 20,000 files (five-to-one shooting; copies in various formats; ratings from can’t-toss-it-now-but want-to to “Pretty Good!”) makes for a bit of a headache.

Add to that headache that the bulk of the digitized collection was in a single directory on the way to frying my old C: drive (yeah, that happened); and on the return, there are now a dozen separate annual directories plus some odd collections.  My goal is to get the “Wall Worthy” into DNG and TIFF collections.

Eventually.

No matter the art or mode, much aesthetic and business success relates to the artist’s ability to explore themes and produce projects.  Be that as it may, right now “it’s hard drainin’ the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators!”

It’s not quite that bad, but there’s a lot to deal with right now — in the box and outside of it.

Snapping off a pretty picture now and then doth not a career make.

For the photojournalists, winning a Pulitzer may “make” a career (or name), but the value of the “one-off manufacture” is notoriety only: all who or have or have left something to look at, from Doisneau to Salgado, have produced a lot on their way to becoming their own brand.

I’d like to catch up but it may be late in the day . . . . although I think there’s some light left in it too.

I don’t know if I have a career or have had one or am having one — hard to tell, all that — but I have made an awful lot of pretty pictures and hope to continue making more of them quite (quite!) soon.

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.