Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

I am part of few people who are going to exchange their digital b&w prints. You send your picture to others they send it to you. I was looking to participate on one of those exchanges as I would like to see how other are doing their prints, coating, different procedure, papers.

I tried hard, really. I did receive my chip reseter Saturday, I did final adjustment on photo whole weekend and start doing proof prints Monday. I run out of paper, so I went to shop yesterday I had feel so lucky that they have it in stock (normally I need to order).
So I start printing eight final prints for you all. I was afraid I will run out of ink in cartridge, which would slow me down for next two days, but luckily when I finished today morning at 03:00, completely exhaust, the epson monitor indicates that I have still ink for two more pages.
So I went to bed and after short sleep ( i need to get to work and so...) I was looking at dried prints and putting them in protection sleeves. And I have found that every print I did on new bought paper has a very very narrow scratch on coating. I was and still I am completely down. Now I do not know what to do. If I do not send it today it will not make to UK until 10.Oct. I need to refill cartridge, I need to buy new paper (that was the last in shop - so I need to order it).
So I ask others if they can wait. Ink is gone, time is gone, other things are gone. I have learned my lesson!
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It is almost midnight, I am glad that this day is over. I am so tired, you know what happened as a last point today? I crashed car from service! I did have a car accident in 18 years, never actually. And today. Well they gave me some shit Mazda 121 12 years old as a replacement car for my when mine was for whole day in service. When I was coming for my car it starts raining and 121 has slick tires. So I coudn't break. I needed maybe one more meter to stop but I hit a opposite car face to face. Shit!!!
Well, I hope tomorrow will be better day.

Things are looking better now. I put new filled cartridge (did it yesterday) to printer. And surprisingly my order of PhotoRag paper from www.s-color.nl arrived in less that 24 hours. This is great service for quite good price.
I am also fine tuning the image for that print exchange. It is unbelievable difficult to print eight prints. One would expect is just pushing a button, well I wish it would. I ruined quite a lot of paper and ink and still I am not getting what I like to have, but I am getting there. Interesting is that I have so many images to print that when I am busy with one for more than week I am getting impatient and keen to try another one, before this is finished.
I am thinking about buying CFS (Continuous Flow System) to stop bothering with refilling of cartridges. But for that I need to sold few more prints. Well maybe next year.

Yes, it is true, things are really turning to good side again. Today (Saturday) I made my first darkroom print after 7 years break. And guess what? I didn't forget it at all. Great print! Now I can compare my carbon pigment prints with darkroom prints.
I also used camera I Borrowed from friend. Canon eos 50e. I must say I love focusing by eye! What I do not like is time gap between camera does focusing, light measuring , quite often I have to re-compose camera and that shoot. It takes quite often very long. Well I shoot one roll and I have in mind to write a small article about my experience with this camera.
And a last think, I went to shoot in ear by city where I am come quite often. Maybe, maybe I will have a chance to borrow Leica 6TTL with 35/2.0mm lens for one day next week. Let's wait if it become true.
And the last good news if you had not enough :-) I finish all prints for UK print exchange!. Sending out Monday!

Today we went to city 250km far Groningen where as a part of NOORDERLICHT 2003 PHOTOFESTIVAL was also exhibition of forty photos of Henri Cartier - Bresson from Mexico. This was the first time I saw them in real. Format of A4 technically not on great level, but not bad at all. But that is not a point, there were by contest really good, few of them I saw and few of the one I didn't I like very much. I must say there were about five extremely good once.
Exposition showed more photographers from Magnum as well as others, but I must say I saw only very few good photographs. One, can't remember name, he was from Sicily and also his pictures where done there. I like them a lot.
These of course are only my own observation and opinions, yours can differ :-).

I developed Fuji Neopan 400 which I exposed using my friends camera canon eos 50e Saturday. I used a little less agitation to get little bit less contrast. Maybe I did too little film is a little bit undeveloped. It anyway seems to be no problem for scanner, which pick up all tones correct.
I am preparing some little change on web design and than I will upload some new photographs.

This shot was done with canon eos 50e I borowed from E. It is not difficult shot I had a time and can focus properly using eye thing. Light measurement was done by matrix metering and I was using apreture priority.

I am just scanning film I developed yesterday. It is Ilford HP5+ exposed this summer in France. I developed it in Ilfotec LC29. I was waiting for results from this combination as both product are classical photo chemistry. Classical emulsion and developer. Now when I am scanning I realize something very important. When I am scanning Neopan or as far as I remember also Kodak TMY I always get scans with histogram which wasn't full scale from black to white. There was always place on both side on the histogram.
Now when I am scanning this HP5+ done in LC29 (1:29) I am getting full histogram, sometimes clipping on both sides. I am not sure if that is true but I have feeling that this is first time when scanner is not able to get complete range from film. If the clipping is only on one side it means wrong exposure by scanner, but it is on both sides.
And how does photos looks? I must say great, let's wait a moment and you will see too. First I like to do little change in my web pages look.

As you can see there are a few changes on look of my web pages. I hope you like it. Little color change and now text is flowing around "latest photos" column. Later there will come more structural changes.
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As a last thing today I have updated last roll page with new picture. This last photo was shot with borrowed Canon eos 50e last Saturday.
Example from HP5+ shot in France will follow soon.

Today was the day for me. I borrowed Leica M6 TTL for half a day. Wasn't really nice weather and also I wasn't really my day, that maybe had influence on how it went. The lens on M6 was 35mm/2.0 Summicron. I was walking with it as usual in my right hand with prefocus on four meters and f8 1/125sec in this light. I must say after 15 minutes I feel paint in my hand, Leica is really heavy. My Bessa R2 is much lighter and I have a grip which makes it easier to hold. I had only little strip around my hand and my fingers were really feeling uncomfortable to hold 3500 euro.
What is excellent is shutter sound. Just a little click which reminds me click of very old mechanical shutters in lenses of those old fold-able cameras for 120 films. It is very silent also film winding is silent. I shoot only around 20 shots in about 3 hours and must say I was feeling quite uncomfortable. Few times I have heart people noticing Leica. With my Bessa R2 nobody cares. So advantage of silent shutter was overbid by well known name.
It was just short introduction to camera, but I must say I like my Bessa R2 much better now and I am sure I am not going to pay four times more for just silent shutter. Of course I didn't developed film yet and I will shoot on the same roll last 15 shots with my 35mm Ultron 1.7 to be able little compare of lenses.
Well that was it Leica and me first time.

If you look into gallery page, you find that I am doing little restructuring. Created few new galleries and move pictures around. I decide that galleries as "Slovakia" or "Sweden" doesn't really tell you anything except of location. So I am heading more for galleries, like, portraits, landscape and so.
Hopefully it will be more useful. I just started and not everything is in place. But maybe at the end of today it will be.

Wow, week passed very fast. I was pretty busy with other things. Working on setup of ADSL connection to Inet from home (not finished yet), printing two photos for assigned theme and quite a few other things. I am also expecting prints from exchange to arrived any time. As well as redesigning my web pages even further. I have new version running on my local server home, but I am not fully satisfied. When I am I will upload it.

I have received prints from October Digital print exchange. When looking on others prints I see there is absolutely nothing I should be ashamed of, even better I think my prints are very good. Daniel Staver from Norway submit print coated with Polyshield coating using brush. It is a glossy coating and brush left quite a marks on surface. As I do not know how does print looks before applying coating I can't say how much depth of black was changed. What I can say right a way is that handling of the print is much easier. Unfortunately marks from brush are very disturbing. Maybe when coating is done using rod, result will be better. I am in contact with Daniel as I like to try this coating as well.
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I did again small changes on website. Now when you are viewing photo in big size and you press thumbnail link on top of it, you always return to correct page in gallery. Not to the first one anymore.

I have just send this message to Daniel:
"Here in Netherlands is snowing, quite a lot of for local weather. Heavy snow flakes are slowly falling down creating few centimeters of soft snow on ground. It will not last long, few hours I guess. When I am sitting here inside it looks beautiful outside. It reminds me my childhood in CzechoSlovakia, where I love that, a lot of snow, nice cold sunny weather. I feel like I am 8, again."

Finally, I again refiled cartridges and can print again. More and more I am printing this way the more and more I am thinking about buying continuous ink system. Than you have to just replace bottles :-)
Once more I was looking at prints from October b&w digital print exchange and must say, I am really satisfied with my prints.

And more troubles on the road. Recently my machine itself reboot (correctly shutdowned and reboot), without I asked for. Than I noticed: my internet connection is overloaded. So I spent yesterday whole evening to clean up virus from my PC. This is a first time ever I had virus on my PC for over 15 years!
I still need to clean other PC I have on net and do some preventive actions.
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Looks like both computers are clean now. I hope it will not happen very soon again. I need to print some prints for Saturday.

After the cleaning our PCs home from virus I could focus a little back on photography. I am preparing GameBoy party photo for Saturday. As you can see boy in front is out of focus. When I do unsharp mask his face gets a lot of grain, so I try something different. First I detect edges and than I create mask which contains those edges. And than I use this mask to sharper only edges. Result is better.
For Saturday I should bring three prints with me. I was thinking about two more from these: Mafia in Amsterdam, Walking a Dog, Tourists from Japan, Following the boy or Marriage in Prague, but I am not completely sure which ones, yet.
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It is almost tomorrow, but I am still printing for Staurday. After scaning of Mafia in Amsterdam in high resolution I realize that whole shots is shaken and therefore blured. Pity, somehow I quite like that picture. I can understand it is shaken, I was running towards them to get close enough in right moment.

I finished printing early today morning and didn't get much of sleep. But anyway what I want to tell you that when I finally getting to prints I am realize how my negatives are bad. Quite few of them are shaken or wrongly exposed/developed. I also feel that I can have some problems with inks in my printer, maybe one could contaminate other and that's why I am getting prints as I do get. I need to print test grey scale stripe and see.
So I have few prints on Saturday but what about technical quality I not much impressed.