Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

Long time ago, when I was teaching course of Neural Networks at Unversity of Zilina I wrote a simple introduction text for it. I am preparing its return to these web pages, Stay tuned!

Today I played with quite strong oponnet and after not playing almost month it was seen. I placed badly my rook and after that I overlooked my rook and queen in same diagonal, well blunder after blunder. I must say that I played in absolutely perfect mood.

My level of chess play is very low, currently is much better that it was, but I never played with other person that with my long time friend Jancik. As a kids we played in Christmass time, when there was a too much snow to be outside.

Best wishes to the New Year!

In Christmass time I was doing cleanup in my room and guess what? I have found around 50 rolls of not-developed film from 6 to 12 years ago. So I have bought chemicals and let's do it!

Today I have ordered a new photo camera. Should be with me tomorrow. Great service from Robert White! More details will follow soon!

In a Old Story you can find my quite old pictures. I was thinking how should I present my pictures. I get idea that presenting them with a stroy about them is maybe best. tell me your opininon.

Few news at photo page.

Game list updated.

Yesterday's round at chess club was another dissaster in a row. I still like to play but I lost 18 from 20 rounds and it's just too much.

Well well, what to do. I am playing really bad. Anyway my friend told me about 25min tournament in six rounds. I am going to practice some openings :-)

Today I have played quite good game. I was playing, at least as I felt, on the same level as my oponent. The result was draw.

I am trying to do something which will hopefully lead into improving in my play. I have read article 400 points in a 400 days . I really agree with observations and conclusions of the author and I hope I will be able to keep to his aproach.

So after a difficult period of my live I feel like getting back here and focus again on the nice things which live is bringing to each of us.
Today I am playing again in a local chess club. As a mentioned elswhere on these pages, I am playing very bad these days. But I am not giving up and hopefully it will turn.

Yesterday I have played at a nice tournament in Schiedam (close to Rotterdam). It was five rounds with 25 min per person, per game. I went there to have almost whole day play chess and try to make no errors in openings. Very nice was that all players were divided into groups per six players based on their ratings.

I have played quite good, but anyway I wasn't able to use properly my 25minutes, almost all the time I was playing too fast. Also I made few very bad moves. I still finished with 2.5 points which was not that bad at all. In my group were three players stronger and two weaker than me.

Yesterday I had no oponent in club, so I practice some positions and made my evening training of tactics. As addition I get into discussion with a guy who is leading a kids chess class in our club. Was nice evening even without playing long game. Hope I can see some results of my tactics study in my play.

One month pathed, just yesterday, I returned from visiting Slovakia, friends, country, familly.

This week Tuesday I have played round 28 in club. After not playing twice and enjoying holiday, getting rest from computers I was quite fresh mooded. I have lost, but anyway I don't think I played that bad. I have got time trouble after move 30.

I played wit Mr.Heyman, nice old man with who I exchange occasionaly some e-mail and maybe in future will be able to play on internet with him. He is a bit stronger than me so maybe he is a good oponent to improve. He is very carefull in playing so good for finding my blunders :-) Check out my game with him at 2001-2002 game page.

Not very much about the company competition on these pages, right? Well you know it happens once a month :-) No no! No excuse. Next week it is a last match, round 9 I guess. This monday we were playing in Breda against strong team. After some reorganization in Ericsson the number of people willing to play chess decrease dramaticaly so we are even not able to find five people to play. So we played in four and started with a score 1-0.

Suprise, suprise we were able to finish with score 3-2 so it means we lost one, win one and made two draws. One draw was done by me. Check details in game section. We very proud as we expected in best one draw which would mean result 4½-½.

Sometimes it happens, yes and you have pleasure from the things you are doing :-) I don't know if it because I have bought about month ago a CD-ROM from Convekta called CT-ART 3.0 or it is just natural evolution, but I am playing a bit better and have also more pleasure from it.

This CD is used for training of chess tactics and was recommended by quite a few people. I must say interface looks nice but to understand how it is working took me about week and I must say I have some 15 years experience with software developing. But once I have understand how it works I enjoy a program, not the interface which I still consider as quite terrible. I think more simple and useful would be more advantage as fancy graphics. "Less is more" rule will help here for sure.

Last few times I played after my holiday I felt much better and results were also better. Take a look at club and ericsson section for details. I am againmore offen playing at freechess.org, if you have a mood richo is my handle there.

Today is the last round of company competition. I will be playing after board five. And yes it is the last one. So what I am not the best one here, at least I can play :-)

This week was a last round of company competition. Even we won this round we finished in a bottom part of the table.

Thanks to my oponent I have get som advatage at the begining, but It took some time to really won.

Yesterday was round 30 in a club. I made a fatal misstake around move 10 and rest of the match was tactical training for me. I think I did quite well after that. Of course I could not really turn result, but I liked the game anyway.

I played, I won even our team won, but we anyway finished at the bottom of table. There is only few weeks until seazon in club will be over, I sould prepare some training plan for summer so next seazon I will start better that this one.

Yesterday was a last round in a club. I didn't have really much chance against 1757 rated player, but until my first bluner (as always) it was fine. So this time 22 moves :-) I need to prepare som plan dor summer so I am better prepared for a start in new seazon in September.

I started to play more offen at FICS and even I joined MayMania tournament for members of STC Bunch. I also played Sunday 45 5 tournament at fics. I lost all games, if it happens that I will play some nice game maybe I'll put it here.

Our place was very close to beach, so one day I went there and spent alone with camera more than three hours walking when beach was almost empty at evening. It was already very low light so technical quality of this shot is not perfect but I like a lot atmosphere and little fog in distance.

Well, yes it was a long time. Again I am in photo mood anf I had developed two TMY and two FOMAPAN T800, which were exposed in 1996! Today I will do preview scan and will see how they doing.

After more than five years I had developed yetserday four rols of b&w films and tomorrow I will go to my first long time chess tournament.

This was my first visit in this country. I like it a lot, surprisingly enough it reminds me very strongly Slovakia. We were visiting our friends there. This girl had a birthday that time. After all happening was over and kids were playing and adults talking and drinking I found her drawing into her new drawing book.

I am developing a lot of rols from France (holidays), but the quality is very bad. I am heavily dissapointed as I expected better results. I still don't know what is the problem, developing, camera, the way I overexposed, sea, missing UV filter, way of scanning. I need to find out!

Even after quite good success on Helmond tournament where I won against 1400 rated player I have a feeling that chess is taking me too much time and there are more important things to do.

After I had return from holiday, I developed quite a few rolls. I must say, that I am quite disappointed as a lot of shots is overexposed. It looks like Kodak TMY is very sensitive for correct exposure and with combination with XTOL 1:1 developer it is very sensitive for development time as well.

I like this shot. When I spot them they were together looking at one boy's gameboy and discussing something. Than they started to play, unfortunately this was shot number 36 on the roll and until I changed to new roll, boys moved to some other place. Pity it was situation when people are busy with something they do not care about you and you can take shots you always wished.

Sometimes, when we back in Slovakia we visit grand parents and further family. They live in nice village and have still quite few animals. I was walking there on back yard and when passing wooden house I met this cat of grandfather Charle.

It is about year ago, when I started chess page, now I am going to reduce it as my interest thanks to the lack of time is more focus on photography, and frankly, my chess knowladge isn't that great :-) So better to spent time on something which can possibly has some results.

When I went together with my wife, the other day to Amsterdam we were planning at the evening meet our friends in certain bar. We were late as we decided to walk there (we like to go using small roads to see other side of place). When we were approaching the place we saw two dark glassed mans arguing over the table, our friends :-)

First I was asking and than after I developed lately few old rols I shared my finding about developing negatives which were exposed quite few years ago.
I have still some rolls which I exposed from 5 to 15 years ago. It only 10 left not as I had around 50 some time ago, so I am getting better.
Let's back about my findings so it can be usefull for you as well. You can take a look into this thread at photo.net, but to summarize:

• I use XTOL 1:1 and add 10% of time suggested for 20C
• First 40% of time I agitate 2 times each 30sec for max 5sec
• Second 40% of time I agitate 2 times each 60sec for max 5 sec
• Last about 20% of time I didn't agitate

Result was quite good. Only very sensitive films had fog, but the shadows were o.k. so it is a bit of difficult to print but still possible. For scanning as I am do, it need multiple scan path and extended exposure time as vuescan allowes. That it is quite o.k., but of course far from ideal. For 100ASA and lower there is no problem at all.I found out that doing less agitation at end and longer the development time is the right way.

Today I finaly did that test. Yes, I was always wondering why suggested time for fixing in Amaloco X88 is not enought to clean a film. It is suggested to dilute 1:4 and fix for four minutes when T-grain films are used. I am using Kodak TMY, but even after 6 minutes, there was still a bit of pink color on clear part of film visible. Ussually I did about 8 minutes. And than clean first in water and than for about 3 min in Hypo Cleaning Agent from Kodak and as a last 10 min in water.

But back, the test! I have read in Ilford documents about the way of finding out a time for fixer. It is described like this:

The clearing time of a film and fixer combination can be found by the following method. It can be carried out in normal lighting.
Take a piece of scrap unprocessed film and place a drop of the working strength fixer on to a small part of the emulsion side. Leave it until the emulsion under the drop is a clear spot, this should take around 30 to 60 seconds. Immerse the piece of film in the fixer bath and using a stop clock time how long it takes for the rest of the film to clear. Clearing can be judged by comparing the surrounding film area with the clear central spot. The time taken for the rest of the film to clear is the clearing time. The fixing time needed is double the clearing time.

So I did that test and yes dot become comepletely transparent in about 45sec. And a cleaning time was 2 min 20 sec. So fixing time should be about 4-5 minutes which is excatly what they say at X88 sticker.
But why is the film still a bit pink? Is it wrong or not? I always thought, that one has to fix until film has no pink color.

First version of my news system is running on this site. I can add,delete and update notes on every place of this site. System is done in PHP and using MySQL as storage.

It is true that my personal software project are not really exsiting, but lately I need some utilities for my other ineterest. So I hope I will find a energy after my work to do even mores software design and construction. Yes, after 15 years of doing so it is becoming difficult.

I must say, and I hope, today is important day in this web site. I finished system for managing these notes (news). And I believe that will make for me much easier to fill more informations and use this much more offen.
It tooks a while, few weeks, but now I am happy that it worked out.

I have ordered new films 6 TMX, 25 TMY, few TMZ and also some chemicals from some cheap inet shop in Amsterdam. Should be here somewhere next week. And because I am planning to go take some pictures this Sunday on local market I need to buy some TMZ in normal shop (almost double price). Those will be necessary as light in a sport hall is limited.
For this Sunday it was actualy planed to go with my friend erco together somewhere, but turn out that it is only me who is interested to do such a thing.

So I am back from market. Not much, really, about 14 shots at TMZ rated 3200. It was really dark there, sport hall with a few neon lights. I do not expect almost anything form it. I still have about 10 shots after I did some home pictures to use 3200 in dark places :-)

Maybe you wondering how it is with me and chess. So I played only two games so far in this season and it was in local chess club Caissa. I won both of them and that indicate level of the club. Point is that every time I go there I have to force myself. When I am there is fine, but I have no enjoyment from it as I have from photography.

Today morning I expected nice weather, sunny morning, and really it is! Beautiful sharp Sun light is illuminating world and creates long shadows.
So I took my camera with rest of TMZ in it (and didn't take any spare rolls) and left house earlier on my way to work than usually. On my way I always ride close to field of farmer. Today nice spring of weather was there to make a ground more wet. Until I made my camera ready they turn it off. Pity, I didn't expect it. So few pictures of child playground, shadows and last one could be nice. Rusted skeleton of car on roof of small building. We will see.

Yesterday after I returned from chess, I have developed TMZ exposed Sunday on market and yesterday on my way to work. From the quick look, shots do look quite o.k. I can't say much about grain (let's see scans evening). Interesting is that shots from yesterday contrast sun lighting are bit underexposed comparing to shots from market. I assume that light on market was more equal and meter in Bessa get confused by small bright parts yesterday morning.
In any case would be great if I do some tests to understand weakness of meter in camera, film and developer. Than I can take necessary steps to make it always right.

Thanks to Xenon, who discover serious problem with my news system, serving him news in mixed languages. Hopefully should be correct now!

I reworked system for displaying photogrpahs. Now it is much easier for me to add new ones. User comfort is also a bit better as one can by clicking on displayed photograph make return to previous page.

Today and yesterday we had a beautiful mornings here. I waked up earlier and took my camera (today also Ricoh with Fuji NPH). Spent about 90min each morning to shoot rising sun and mist on fields with birds. Such a moorings are beautiful so I took color film this morning as well as my 135/2.5 Pentax lens.
It is a pity that I am with developing always behind what I shoot. I still didn't publish any pictures from market last week. Should do that first!

Everybody was talking about that city, that we should see it so at the end we decided to go there. It is only few dozen kilometers far. As we were walking there we found ourselves in kind of art's market. This man was watching me quite secretly, as I was walking with camera around and taking pictures. At the end when he light up his cigar I took my chance.

I add some more text in notes section.
Yesterday was a difficult day, quite a pressure in work, than I wanted to developed some negatives. Well I did, it was after midnight, when I finished. And I realize, because of my bad mood I did 30sec less on a first tank (2 rolls) and it is seen. Not tragic but second tank was better. I am using XTOL 1:1 at 20C for 8:45 with 2 agitation in 30sec. First 30sec constant agitation and last 60 sec no agitation. I am starting timer when developer is in tank and starting pouring developer out about 5-10 sec before times up. That way I am getting consistent results, which satisfied me.

We were shopping and I get bored in this shop and I took my camera and try to shoot with open lens and 1/30sec until security guard tell me that it is not allowed, even no sign in shop. So I stopped I did few shots which turns to be quite nice.

Last few days I am preparing for making some final prints. I still designing my ImageArchive, software which should help me with organizing my scans. I should probably put it on hold for the moment as I would love to have some 5 prints in two weeks. I need to select some good one and do final scans.
Anyway I developed two rolls yesterday and I have feeling like my camera is measuring different in strong light and low light. Shots from strong light are bit overexposed. I don't know if it is only my feeling or true. I am wondering how I can prove it.
Today I am planning to use for the first time Amaloco AM74 developer for TMY. Reason is simple, it is liquid concentrate (easier handling) and is cheaper. I dilute 1:7, 1:9 or 1:15 and you need to use minimal 20ml per roll. So I am going to use 1:15 dilution with 30ml AM74 and 450ml of distillate water. That means that I can use only one roll in tank. Let's see how it will work.

I was supposed to take some portraits pictures at the morning, instead I took walk in lunch time and shot about 30 shots. Mostly light and shadows on wall, leaves. Quite contrast light. I used my 135mm/2.5 lens on Ricoh camera. First time I use TMX film. Should be some good once, like leaves balancing on iron wire, chimney and trees in the sky.

After drying today morning I looked at negatives and they nicely developed. They a bit denser than I am used to from XTOL. I will see if there will be any problems when scanning today evening.
I did 1:15 30ml+450ml AM74:H₂O and for 9:36 at 20C. First 30sec constant agitation the every 30 sec 2 reverse agitation in 5 sec and last around 86 sec no agitation. I am always starting timer after tank is filled and starting pouring developer out when it is about 10sec to time up. Yesterday I started with 21C as it was quite called temperature drops to 20.2C after 3 min and was at 20 after 4min. Maybe I should shorter a time bit to do not make them so dense, but let's first scan it to see if it is a problem for scanner.
Very interesting is that background is almost totally transparent! Much more than when used with XTOL! After fixer it do not looks like that but after using Kodak Clearing agent and 5 min water clean it came out almost totally transparent. About scans later in the evening.

Eight minutes in AM74 diluted 1:15 seems to be for TMY a bit short. Next time I go for 8:30 as some shots seems to be undeveloped. One inversion per 30 sec seem to be on other hand quite enought. I did first 30 sec constant inversion and each 30sec one inversion for 3 sec until the end of time. More info and possibly some example tomorrow after scan.

I just found interesting information about developing procedure for TMY and AM74. It says: 1 inversion per 30sek, 20C, 5 min at 1:7 so 8min at 1:15. Interesting. Maybe I'll try it tonight. It could be quite true when I compare to my results.

Scans from new TMY developed in Amaloco AM74 looks really good. It was a rainy day so no extra contrast. But I have shots on other film (old TMY) developed in XTOL 1:1 and AM74 looks better.
There is one sure think for a next time i will shorter the time and a bit less agitation. Some dark part of negatives are quite a problem for scanner. I mean it is on the border, but better be on safe side and use 9:00 next time. I have to say that if not better than this way gave at least same results as XTOL.

Results of yesterday's developing are, as expected, undeveloped negatives. It is again not critical, but additional 30 sec would made the difference. Scaner has no problems but thanks to short developing time negatives are flat and contains no dark parts. Bright white is missing from pozitive.
I learn something: roll should be exposed on same light and based on that knowledge developed. If I remembered that film was exposed in flat light with not much contrast I could do more inversion and increase contrast.

It was a quite sunny autumn day when I was in city near by. I saw this bike on side of busy street and like light and shadows on a graffiti wall behind it

Saturday and Sunday I have shot one roll of TMY. Main reason was to test 8:45 time with AM74 developer. I developed it yesterday and it definitely looks better that when I used 8 min. I can't say much about how does it look comparing to 9:36 min. Let's see after scan
Things I shoot, were mostly static low contrast scenes. I am wondering what is actually my interest. I was thinking about it and realize that I have much more satisfaction to take photos of people that static objects. Could be interesting to try some portraits.

Sunday I developed TMX which I shoot few days ago in very contrsat lighting. I used AM74 for 8min at 20C with 1:15 dilution (30ml+450ml).
As it was shoot in very contrast lighting I decided to invert 3x only each 60sec. Result is terrible. Now I see that suggested 30sec interval for inversions is really necessary

I am working on the small script which will make easier for my publish new pictures at web. That's why I didn't show much lately. Even I am pretty busy today and tomorrow I hope it will be soon ready.

This picture has quite funny story, I was walking around those barrels quite often in my lunch break. They were standing next to hockey club together with a other rubbish. Once I was going there again and everything around the club was nicely cleaned and barrels get new plastic bags and rubbish was gone :-)

Another try to develop TMY with AM74. I exposed some static shots, mostly tries difficult lightning. Reason is to learn exposed better and on other hand also have material for this AM74 testing.
It was 8:45 at 20C. 30ml:450ml First 30 sec non-stop inversion than 4x in 30 sec for no more than 5sec (new way of inverting, now by one hand instead of two and much faster turns. Not waiting until liquid flowes down). Last 45+25 sec no inversion.
Result is bit more dense esspecialy in higlights areas. Not really sure if it is caused by overexposing or too much agitation.

Nobody believes that this can was there when I saw it. But it is true one Saturday, national shopping day in the Netherlands :-), I tried to find something interesting. I though, a lot of people I must find some interesting situations or stories. As usually nothing, everybody fats walking from shop to shop, watching only in front, not taking care about anybody else, bla... When I decided to quit I pass by this statue. And I saw on shadow stone this red/blue can. Nice cultural contrast!

Imagine rainy, shadow day, walking in a centre, everything looks flat uninteresting and than you see colorful arranged place full of nice vegetables in front of cafe-restaurant. What a refresh!

After all the AM74 trying I will go back to XTOL 1:1. I made tonight new batch of XTOL and maybe tomorrow will try next TMY with it. I am wondering what will be difference.

I developed one roll in XTOL and from previews scan (600dpi) I can't really see any hude difference. I must say I was hoping to get more shadow details or larger shadow scale. I always looking adn DB scanse how they looks great, full of tones. Somehow I can't get that. My digital techques should be improved, I guess. I will focus on it ion following days.
I also did some developing on my imgArchive software. Architecture is ready and GUI is design. Now some more design of classes and interfaces should be refine and than maybe first working version will be done.

Maybe you wondering what I was doing all this time, Well implementing imgArchiver software is taking some time. But I am working on it. I have first version which doesn't do much ready. All data structures are ready GUI is ready. Hopefully I will see first images on the screen and than saving and retrieving from Database is on plan.

No much shooting for a last 3 weeks. I have two rolls undeveloped and I am planning to open new page titled "From the last roll". With a few friends we going to share opinions about few shots every time we finish a roll.
I am not shooting much because I sent my Bessa-R back to the shop to be replaced by Bessa-R2. Hopefully I will have it in few weeks and will be able to do more pictures in winter time in Slovakia.

I am playing chess very rarely, about once a week. I play at much lower level than I used to play in de Baronie club. But I must say I enjoy these games much more. So I didn't finish with chess totaly, just try to make it fun again.

First big step is here. My command line utility for publishing images on web including photo upload and database info update using XML-RPC is working.
This is actualy just test drive as the code will be integrated into imgArchiver as one of the functions.

Today I first time use the Viera's old camera Zenit 12xp. I had similar camera as my first. I owned Zenit TTL. I did whole TMY mostly shot at 1/60 or 1/30 with open Helios-44M-4 58mm/1:2 lens. Almost all shots indoor at very low llight and rainy weather.
My Bessa is still at Robert-White. Hopefully I will get it back soon.

At the holiday in Slovakia, I am doing quite a few pictures. I like frozen water, trees and clear blue sky. I am wondering when those negatives gets developed.