By the time I auditioned as a piano player at Vera’s Restaurant (Vera’s Beach Club, Restaurant, and Marina), I had already gotten off track with the cameras (and, possibly, also the Cancun Cantina), but it so happened I got my (way-out-of-practice and with an old repertoire) chance while working on a book for Johns Hopkins University Press: Maryland Food Traditions.
For the writer (not I on that project), and for a while, I jumped often and got around a bit, but for near free (there was a very small advance) and going on six years when all should have been set and out and gotten in inside of six months, the project got old, old enough, in fact, to age the contemplated publication and press run into the paper-bound past.
Although you never know . . .
In any case, the pictures on the Hopkins project were all in, and I’ve kept them and migrated them from machine to machine and disk to disk and collection to collection lo these many years (just in case, there’s a DVD around here too). Among the prized: that above of the much loved southern Maryland restaurateur Vera Freeman.
I will ask the writer on the Hopkins project for the write-up.
I’ll also see if I can find the notebook for the shoot and discover if there’s something to add.
Also, the above was recorded on film, probably Ektachrome 100 SW, scanned at 2400 dpi, and converted to gray scale, a long process and one now largely consigned to the history of photography.
Sorry, film stalwarts, but even with the now old D2x I use for weddings, it’s near impossible finding an excuse for shooting either 35mm or 6×4.5 medium format without a great subject plus an allocation of time and money to justify it — and sigh, I’ve got my share of dead old film bodies laying around this place: with the exception of an FM3a, it’s the lenses that continue making me happy.
talking to (L-R) Chris, Jake, and Larry — three drummers — and got around to who’s been touring (Jake has in recent memory, down to and around Florida and back but may have other things on his mind these days; Larry’s hiding some Boston-in-the-70s stories along that track; Chris has done some festivals), recording, and making videos. Well . . . .
I knew Dino and a few of the guys had done this thing, but Larry had The Tablet there at the counter, and I was surprised and pleasantly so.
Hagerstown is really quite nice.
I’ve often called it the Santa Barbara of the D.C. area — far enough out of town to be out of town; close enough to get in for business or a special occasion; (driving an hour to have a doctor look a broken finger — that’s another story).
Dino and The Compadres got it together to get a decent recording from Les Thompson, formerly of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who has got a studio in the mountains west of the capital == Cabin Studios — and nicely directed by a gent and luthier I’d like to meet — Dan Harris.
Everyone in The Business knows — the community knew ten years ago when I was hanging out with a little bit of it in Baltimore — that desires that involved a large in-town brick and mortar studio would pretty soon find themselves served by pretty good desktop and portable recording gear and software. That future has come to pass, and perhaps it transferred more power where it should be: human capital wherever it happens to live.
Let the market decide, but I thought Dino’s tune and the production perfectly shaweet.
I had hoped that Communicating Arts, my DBA. would have its own more business-like face and that this blog would be more intimate.
But that would take discipline.
Nonetheless, I may give the other place some attention (and Katie is 480×599 pixels over there).
One thing I’m figuring out is people love to look at pictures!
But most, perhaps, don’t like reading much — and forget it for less-than-firebrand political expression (just my way of saying I’m not sure what to do with Backchannelsor its precursor, the neglected mother of all my blogs, ol’ Oppenheim Arts & Letters).
I may have overdone it a bit with this self-publishing business, but I’ve had (and may be having) a great experience going for broke.
It’s time to settle down some.
By which I wish I could mean “Grab a Nikon and fire up the ‘Stang!” Or “Grab a guitar and find an open mic!” Or, “For Pete’s sake, nothin’s happenin’ — go for a walk, get in some groceries, do some home cookin’, and start getting some value back out of that expensive Netflix subscription!” Or “The bedroom has its own heater and Wistrich’s book on anti-Semitism is a long one . . . .” Oh, yeah — like that last one will get me away from shooting window blinds and treetops!
One thing about “Katie” up there and “model-photographer culture” not too far back there (I think have still a free account at modelmayhem.com): cyberlife seemed more simple back then.
🙂
Among the catalogs that get in here — either Orvis or the Barbour (which catalog long ago had a great influence on my photography) has got me on the Sundance and Gorsuch catalog lists (count among my favorite movies The Talented Mr. Ripley) — there’s one — 32 Bar Blues — devoted to clothing blues musicians (THAT’S got to be a niche!). It’s got me thinking that the thought that I couldn’t be anything that has propelled this monstrous branching (even though it might all turn out pretty good — stay tuned), and had I just one my one-track-mind thing (from 17 to 27 it was music: sadly, most of it down in the basement with the exception of some spectacular local moments, like that night I put on a wig and opened with an a capella “Frank Mills” — from Hair — at the Takoma Cafe, recently converted from the “head shop” ne “Maggie’s Farm” down there in that nuclear-free “Bekeley of the East” on the eastern edge of the District.
Good times.
Could it have been all downhill from age 25?)
could have easily been avoided by walking out of a house at 17 and never, ever, never going back.
It would have been a different life.
In some ways, I’m glad I haven’t done 20 years at “Chuck’s” — maybe.
Strangely, that would have made for a more conventional life — I imagine movin’ air pushin’ inventory, getting a wench in trouble, raisin’ brats to raise the roof!
Instead: looking at 60 alone (today) with cancer.
Bum deal, man.
So I look at this 32 Bar Bluescatalog with its $600 satchels and +$200 cool daddy beads and think, ain’t that the life?
I really should get somebody into the Mustang’s shotgun seat, ya think?
Winter might give us in Western Maryland a nasty “See you later” this week, but as I should have a long time ago, it’s clearing out fast.
This latest flurious posterbating comes of rediscovering old shots on the way to recompiling a collection that started as a block of 20,000 files and for backup was divided both by year and subject into a dozen separate Lightroom catalogs. As I haven’t settled on a “best practice” for balancing bulk with speed while separating out for archival protection (transition to the DNG format; additional backup) definite collections like “Antietam in Sepia” — one print edition available at the moment — and potentials like “Antietam in Color” (yes, there will be a series).
With anything involving a computer, resisting distraction becomes part of the smallest efforts.
This morning, I had a request to come up with stained glass window art from the local synagogue, and even with just two old pictures posted this morning (what picture is not immediately old?) , you can see how that’s going . . . .
J. S. Oppenheim -- All Together 