Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

From time to time is good to wake up early. I did today, when I went outside sky was still pretty dark, but clean no clouds. Moon and Venus were like two strong beamers on that dark background.
I borrowed a tripod from friend yesterday. I have that idea of night pictures in room. With light on wall from passing cars and road lighting. Today morning the another idea come back to me. I had that last year never but it in reality. To shoot night picture in moonlight.
This morning was really inspiring. I like that kind of feeling when your mind is running full and you enjoy it. When environment is calm and you can create ideas. Great!

I have borrowed tripod from a friend. After I load Fuji Neopan Across last week I like try some night shots, first on small rolls and developed them in Aculux 2. I have a couple of ideas for these night shots, I just need to start.

I have bought Tetenal Neofin developer. It is two bath developer with high compensating effect in high contrast (night) situations. I would like to use this developer with Aculux as well. I have few ideas about night shots in room and few outside. IN this period of the year we have here quite a lot of fog which makes nice light diffusion effects.

Adding more and more prints these days, but writing here little less. You know it is before Christmass time and all the problems we need to solved let me with much less time than I would wish for photography. I am nevertheless working hard on better design of these web pages. From small group of people who saw new design I can say it is better. More compact but still light. As I wrote earlier I am preparing small set of photographs to open sale with, on these new pages as well. I like to do it properly so it is taking little more time that I expected.

Did you also had that feeling, when you were young, that you need to be alone? You were walking different path in woods than your parents. First you feel proud and happy that you deciding your own way. Later you stopped trying to locate sounds of your family. And find yourself alone and fragile and at the end was happy when you saw them coming again.

Today is it first time I have my extra day off. From now on I will have every Friday this extra time. I am looking forward to it.

Later today, actually at the evening we had quite a discussion about this with Viera. This my extra day off has effect on my salary of course and I have a plan to make up that with some more sales of my photographs. It is quite a decision, you know. I am not alone here and whole my family will be effected. Sometimes I do not find that much confident that I can actually do it, I mean to sale my photos. On other hand I would like to come to position when I am making photographs good enough for other people to pay for them. So from time to time I need some kind of kick. Last week I have got nice mail from Dirk and tonight Viera clean up my mind. I love her for it!

Today I have brand new energy source charged yesterday evening. So I did some more prints. I am selling two prints to colleague of mine. One is Horse and second one is School brushes. First one was quite a work, I was buys with it whole Friday and before that few days. Difficult lighting make it nice but also difficult to print. Second one is surprise for me. This is a second order for this print. I like it and it has special feeling, but become popular? Hm maybe it is because it is again very difficult to print. Now it is not because light but because I use film which was scratched or other way corrupted from factory. Anyway I have both prints ready, just need to put them to mat.
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I did some re-organization with my papers and have found box of Ilford Smooth pearl paper. I forgot about that paper. When I was using UT1 inks it wasn't possible to print on glossy surface. Now I have UT2 inks so I try it and print the Horse on it. It looks good, very good. Dark black are really deep. It has only one disadvantage and that it light reflection. That is primary reason why I prefer matte papers. They from any angle of view look same. But I was nicely surprised that there was no metamerizm (or bronzing how some people call it).

Nice light, texture and feel of sand brought me memories from my childhood. I sit on that fish and become slowly swinging while watching the same movement of fish's shadow.

I am printing on glossy paper with no problems. I am amazed, why didn't I try it before? I also print some cards of half A4 size. They are HP paper half fold cards glossy paper. Prints nicely but dry very very slowly I hope it will be dried at the morning.
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Orders are ready also some surprises for few friends. It is so great when things are rolling, I feel again full of energy and I believe in myself again.

It was one of those gray winter days, when temperature rise above zero and snow is dirty and wet. This snowman had such a depressive face like he knew he is going to melt soon.

While walking in old Swedish village I saw this outside lamp with red flowers in front of it. Those shapes somehow plays together for me. Everything would be ok except that it was around -10C.

Order for two prints is sent out. I print four different cards yesterday on HP glossy paper. It was drying whole night but still today morning it is little sticky. I must say that this is not final product still a lot of things to do on it. Trying the different papers and little better layout. Otherwise I have got quite good feedback from people who saw cards today. I gave out few of them.

I decided to sell my Olympus equipment. It works great and in past year I use it on all my pictures. I can sell per piece or as total. Just e-mail me with offer. For sale are body Olympus OM-2n with leather bag & rubber eye piece, Olympus OM-2sp, 28/2.8 with shade & box, 50/1.4 with hard box , 85/2.0 with hard box, B&W UV filter and B&W polarized filter which fits any of these lenses (49mm).

Today morning I was listening CD from Portishead, which I have bough years back, somewhere around 1996?. She was singing about the two, how they can't leave without each other. It was great to listen about such a connection between two people. And than I realized this is the biggest barrier between people, one's own ego. You can't see, can't get closer to other people because your ego is staying in front of you. I love Viera very much but this feeling and all possible expressions which this feeling could create (and sometimes does) is obscured by my ego. Just one need to be more aware of such a thing, to be able to put it (ego) on a side and show to the person all his/her appreciation. You can have a feeling that than your own goals and targets are put on side that you are no going to have enough time for them, for yourself.
I believe it is not true, it is just opposite. You will feel better, you will have the same time but you will spend better. Better in achieving your goals, better with a way you live your live with your partner. This sounds terrible like taken from some stupid book, but I feel like that so who cares!

Sometimes it happens. You are surprised very much. It happened to me now, I have got e-mail from a friend of mine I didn't see for very veery long time. It was once we were exchanging dozen of mails in hours when we were apart and now for years less than one mail a year. Things are changing I know but not everything has to go. I am happy really happy to be in touch again.

I am quite busy today with preparing new site design for run. Especially arranging new images and cleaning some old away. It is a lot of work, but I believe it is worst it.

I have bought flash SB-28 last week from eBay. Tried it first time today. As I never worked with one I am quite curious. I must say it makes whole camera much more heavier. I shot five rolls in less than two hours and use two kinds of films.
Maybe that is obvious for people who use flash, but I realize that when you use less sensitive film you can shoot from closer distance. I am quite curious about results.

I have visited tonight photo club where two our neighborhood girls going every Wednesday. I didn't know that they will be going to darkroom tonight so I didn't take any negative with me I only grab few my prints. I had a little discussion with leader of the group, young enthusiastic man who, I think enjoy leading this group of beginners through a curves of black and white photography and chemistry. I am somehow little different. Lately I do not find much of joy in endless discussions about different films, papers developers, what I like is looking at someones photographs and talk about ideas behind it and why he/she express it that particular way. I think that is much more interesting than technical details of dilution of particular developer.

This is a busy week. Last few days before Christmass and head full of plans and a lot of things to do. We are with Viera quite busy with children's activities in school and have not much time left for our own interests. On other hand we would like to have a nice Christmass time and therefore we need to arrange a lot of things.
I had discussion with a friend about organizing time between shooting and printing. He always shoot and than he close himself to darkroom for month and he make best prints from exposed material. I shoot all the time and printing parallel while shooting new things. I just can't resist when I have that feel to go out and take pictures or when I have idea than I just need to take camera. That of course has effect on my back log of printing. So I will try to do the same. I will limit my shooting for some time and will work on material I have and I must say I have a quite a lot of it.

I wish you nice new year!