J. S. Oppenheim -- All Together

One Half Pound of Pure Colombian Wow!

Posted on April 15, 2013 by commart

Across all the years I had a ready passport, I used it but once — and bravely drove across the border into Canada.

With a another man’s wife.

In an old pickup truck, kind of like “Bertha” (my HP B9180 printer): you never knew if it was going to work.

But that’s another story for another time.

Now I have more than 550 Facebook buddies all over the world, would I had the business to visit them all!

And the ready passport.

I think I can do something about that, for I believe I shall again have to escape to Canada (in J. Peterman style: “for a cup of exceptionally crafted Java Mama roasted bean brewed somewhere in that movie making Canadian town that competes with Baltimore”).

Roasted by my namesake, Susan Oppenheim.

If you’re in Toronto and see her at her roaster, say hello (no need to mention the, um, international travel . . . it was a long time ago . . . memorable . . . yet still . . . back there a ways).

And one more note (while I’m sipping the goods): unless you plan on falling asleep somewhere around, oh, say 5 a.m., this is not bedtime coffee!

Posted in Journal, Restaurants | Tagged coffee, cyber thank-you note | 1 Comment

Woods’ Marble Marker, Dusk, Cemetery, Rockfish Presbyterian Church, Nellsyford, Virginia, April 9, 2013

Posted on April 15, 2013 by commart

While the Woods were not the ancestors for which Dean searched, Dean found family (not “Dean”) and would call the adventure worthwhile.

I don’t know if photographers make good visitors.

I supposed we’re more tolerable than lovers, teenagers discovering beer, and vandals, and then also much less full of it than Goth novelists and poets (here goes for an opener: “The stone beckoned in the hill country gloaming”), but if unrelated except by mortality to what lies beneath, we may think a graveyard another garden, someone left the gate open, and it’s late.

Posted in Blue Ridge Mountains, Cemeteries, Photography, Rural, Snapshots | Tagged cemetery, dusk, flat marker | Leave a comment

Is It A Snapshot If . . .

Posted on April 15, 2013 by commart

You change lenses?

🙂

Or try to take the shot by setting the bag on your knees and the camera on the bag?

I think it still is.

Dean was looking for a coffin marker.

I was doing my best with a now ancient 70-210mm f/4-5.6 Nikkor (Quantaray filter on top).

Did You Get Out Of The Car?

My way of describing “level of effort” in photography: did you get out of the car?

Did you go up to the fence?

Did you get into the pasture?

Did you walk up to the bull?

Of course there are many other questions, and for enthusiasts disinterested in shops selling delicate china and crystal, the first among them should be: “Did you bring your tripod!?”

😦

Nikon’s VRII technology in the 16-85mm has picked up a lot of slack, and traveling with other purposes in mind has dampened the must-bring signal of the carbon-fiber ‘pod, but still . . . it would have been nice to have had it along.

Readers may view the result (using the old “bag on knee” trick) in the previous post.

Even the dinky — but very good — Lumix Lx5, with which I’ve idled out a year, has a selling point in its base tripod mount.

Credit accepted — not that you offered — nonetheless, for getting out of the apartment, down the road, and out of the car.

😉

Posted in Aesthetics, Photography, Snapshots | Tagged effort, photography, snapshots, tripod | Leave a comment

Sunset, Exurbia, Waynesboro, Virginia, April 9, 2013

Posted on April 15, 2013 by commart

Posted in Blue Ridge Mountains, Rural, Shenandoah Valley, Spring, Travel, Virginia | Tagged exurbia, landscape, photography, rural, snapshot | Leave a comment

Statuary, Augusta Memorial Park, Waynesboro, Virginia, April 9, 2013

Posted on April 10, 2013 by commart

I got my introduction to large cemetery statuary on a visit to a film studio in North Carolina located across from a Baptist graveyard on a two-lane, no-line country road. On one side of that lane, Jesus and grave sites and flowers as far as the eye could see (so I recall) and on the other, a low building fronted by a slim walkway decorated with nude ebony statues.

When I find those old slides, I’ll scan a few of them.

In the meantime, in what seems like both a rare and odd departure from my apartment, Dean had the jones for visiting an ancestor’s grave site. Fortunately, the precise location was unknown and the Augusta County, Virginia cemetery quite large — fourteen gardens, none, that I could tell, arranged by generation or year: the bronze plate for which we were searching could have been close by the front gate (where the above picture was taken) or far toward the back and just about anywhere between.

We know we must have walked by it — we just didn’t know where we were at the time.

* * *