Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

I am kind of fighting with Aculux 2 from Paterson. After I developed the first roll for 15min and 4x inversion in each minute (as recommended for Fuji Neopan 400), I did the same on film exposed in contrast full light.
I have got overdeveloped quite dens negatives. They are maybe good for enlarger with strong light, but definitely not for my scanner. So next time I did 12 minutes and 4xinversion in min. Little, but very minimal improvement.
Yesterday I developed for 10 minutes and only one inversion. Results are better, but still something is missing. I have to look more into it. Strange what a difference between recommendation and reality for different light. I find 30% difference quite a lot.

Something must happened. I have sold yesterday two prints and I have got order for next two. Quite a lot of work, so not much sleep these days.
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I have found little time and I am ADSL connected now. Finaly! I was paying for it almost two months and now I am using it. What was the problem? Well. simple I was hoping I can make that USB ADSL modem force to run with my linux gateway. Because provider provided different model than he was describing on its site (I have got ericsson instead alcatel speedtouch) I wasn't prepared properly. Than I tried to use some eci driver but end up in so called 'short term not-solvable' situation. So because I didn't want invest any more time and I have got that USB modem for free I just bought ethernet ADSL modem.
Today I got it, today I am online with it. Simple!

It was a beautiful day today. Very cold but nice sharp Sun. So I went to take some photos. After almost three hours I was quite cold, but I exposed four rolls. I believe some nice stuff could be there. Mostly I was focused on child play grounds. I try to make some still life which reassembles my memories when I was small.
Even in such a cold day I found kids playing on each of them. Most of them were very interesting what I am doing and some of them even help me to get what I like to shoot.
I taught I will develop them today, but a lot of other things came in and I am also quite tired. I also exposed one extra roll as a small test to get out of this cloudy search for developer. I think anyway, I have to do final cut.

One afternoon I used my new 28/2.8 lens in very dull weather. Those two kids were p[laying with new popets so intensively that they didn't bother to look what I am doing. I did this print in darkrrom as well and it looks pretty nice.

Sunday I also exposed test roll, where I shoot two scenes, high and low contrast ones with different exposures. U exposed from two stops under up to two stops over exposure indicated by my meter.
I developed that roll yesterday in Paterson FX-50 in standard 1:1:13 dilution for 15min @ 20C for Fuji Neopan 400.
I didn't scan it yet, but from short inspection by eye I can see how overexposed negative looks. It is muddy dense, something like light is expanding to neighborhoods areas and polluting it. This way all negative looks like through milk glass. I will see more today when I am going to scan it.

Some of you maybe wondering why I didn't finished (or continue) testing with Aculux 2? I just realize, and find confirmation of that on Paterson web site, that Aculux 2 is not very suitable for high contrast scene. And those are situations I shoot on few rolls which I need to develop. So I gave a try to FX-50.

Yesterday my hard disk stoped working and therefore my PC was unbootable. Luckly I have all my data on other, newer and bigger disk. Just the old one, used for booting and software instalation, died.
Unfortunately I have to reinstall whole system and it takes while. It is very unhandly as I need to print quite a lot of pictures in very short time, before Christmass.

My PC is back on-line. I already printed some new prints yesterday and I am glad it is working again. Now I definitely like to invest little bit more in backup and redundancy solutions. I was thinking about PowerQuest's Drive Image 7 as a solution for backup, combined with DVD-rewriter. And maybe in future RAID for mirroring data. I have to start easy as I am short on budget. Let's try the software with cd-writer and see how does it work and than maybe invest into DVD rewriter and later on to RAID controller.
I am happy that I had data on other disk. This way I only loose time for reinstalling system on new disk. Otherwise I would loose a lot of data. I have backups, but only some databases, but not all files I would like to have.
Let's take this as a warning and learn from it.

I promised to publish few more pictures, but unfortunately I have no time left. After very busy week, when I printed only few pictures of those, which I originally planned, I am quite tired.
I will have in few following days opportunity to take pictures on interesting places, hopefully I will catch something nice.
Hang on, I will be back soon, with more...

I have moved myself across Europe. Now sitting in Prague and thinking how will be the next day. I hope, I could do some nice photographs here.

Today was our last day in Prague, now is dark outside and snowing very heavy. Nice huge snow flakes slowly falling from sky. Very nice.
Unfortunately I made almost no shots. Only about five, and I do not believe that anything nice. It is pity, always when I come here (not that often) I am expecting something more, something else. I need to thing about this more. I really do not understand why this is always happening. One of the reason is almost for sure lack of time. Second is that I am not alone and I am not only one who has plans.
On other hand Prague is also not anymore the city I remember from over 15 years ago. It has changed to be heavily commercial and touristic city. I am looking for more original places, places where are no tourists. I prefer find a places where people are living.
Last full day we had here I went with camera walking around places far from center in hope to find something interesting. As I was walking around old church I notice strange roof pointing behind walls of neighborhood castle. Very narrow roof ending with double cross move on side. I did few shots and start walking around walls. I came to gate which was locked and very high. I could hardly see another two, three, similar roofs. After I asked nice lady walking near by, what is it and how I can get it, I went to local city hall as she suggested. I find out that houses with narrow roofs are made for movies which is being made there and it is not possible to enter the place. What a pity.

After we moved to north part of Slovakia, temperature dropped to -18C and snow level was about 30cm. Immediately next morning I take camera and while Sun was shining I went around village (Lokca) to take some photos.
I always do this, I really enjoy walking in cold air on snow and Sun in my back. If you moving you do not feel much of cold. So I went first looking for some places where kids can play. As today is special day Christmas Eve, I find no kids playing.
Than I walked next to small river in direction of football field. I remember how we played with kids few years ago there in the summer. I made few shots of long shadows of trees on snow. And after around two hours and two and half rolls I end up back in house with nice mood and frozen hands.

Today we visited grand grand father Karol and all relatives in his nice village. That is the place where I shoot some nice pictures like this one for example. We had a nice chat with P. and Z. as well. Very nice people are living there. I am always bit ashamed that we came there with empty hands.

Visiting of my home town Zilina, always bring me a lot of memories and wish to create photos about my childhood. Unfortunately I have the same problem like with taking photos in Prague. It is a lack of time. I like to be with my parents and also go to city. Most of the time we visiting Zilina in Christmas, weather is quite bad, rainy and cloudy, doesn't make it easy for photography.
This time we spend whole day in my parents and only shortly visited a city and we decide to come back at the last day of the year.

Another visit, this time my wife's sister. Shortly visit of town with plan to buy some books. Well most of the shops are closed, city is quite empty and that doesn't help to our mood. Than we coming for actual visit and running out with kids to play little on the snow.
I took my camera little earlier and went around block of flats to search for some places which could remind childhood. I found few and I did some shots. After while I found two girls playing some kind of game. I start taking picture of them and talk to them a little. In the last light of falling Sun I believe I made quite a nice photos. I am looking forward to see results. Than I joined kids with mothers on the hill where there were sliding down on snow. It was a fun and day turn out to be very nice.

Krakow - beautiful city. We had plans to visit this city together with visiting our friends who are spending Christmas time there. We coudn't contact them, but we anyway we decided to go to the Krakow for one day.
Weaher wasn't any good, cloudy and little rainy. Roads are not any good either, but we managed without any harm. As we saw trams we left car on the edge of the city and using tram we went into historical center of the Krakow. I like that idea very much. And saw part of the town from tram and than historical center by walk.
At the end we managed to contact our friends and we spent night there and left next day morning. Krakow is a beautiful city and we will be definitely visiting it again for longer time. A. tell us interesting stories about town history, showed us nice places and interesting cafés. Again I would love to spend more time there.
What about taking pictures goes, as weather was quite bad I do not believe I will have anything exceptional. I did try to make some night shots, but without tripod, so I do not have any hope there either.
I can't help myself to compare Prague and Krakow and I believe that Krakow is much nicer and still have that kind of interesting atmosphere which Prague is loosing. Mostly due to huge amount of tourists and commercial activities which makes things very artificial.