Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

I have received yesterday following email from customer to whom I have send prints early this week. Such a nice email! I am honored!


"Dear Richard,

I am very happy with your photographs !
I can see that you took good care with the passe partouts, the black passe partouts are very nice with the photo´s. I also like the size of the photographs, they are perfect like this.
The photo´s evoke a lot of feelings for me: to be alone in a quiet nature experience, yet also the presence of people who are just absent for a while. Also the tension, the excitement of what happened when you were not there which gives the possibility to fantasize. And snow in itself takes me back to my childhood when suddenly in the morning the whole world was different and new. I think it is very nice when you can make people think about things like this when they look at a picture you have taken."

As my latest experience with eBay sale and last sales from this shop showed, there is a market for lower priced prints.

And therefore from today I am starting to offer Open editions of small prints. These prints are made by the same technology and at the same quality as Limited edition prints. They are smaller. Size of print is 13x18cm and they are placed in passe-partout of 20x28cm size.

Each print from this Open edition is signed but not numbered. The smaller size makes it possible to reduce price to 15 euro per print.

Please take a look.

I was busy and tired whole week. One is surprised when realize how time is running fast. Today is again Friday and in whole week I didn't write a line here. I must say that main reason was that I was having constant headache for over four days. It was terrible. Muscles on my neck get hard, probably from cold, and my head was going crazy. First few days I even woke up few times in the nigh with a pain. Some exercises helped a bit, but slow. And I guess, this is how it always goes. bad things we arrange fast and long time is needed to fix them. Entropy, isn't it :-)

Little bit on technical level. I have had today chance first time to try myself Paterson development tank. And I have to tell you, that is a great thing. First, I was a bit afraid to try it directly with good films. But when I use those wheels to load film I was shocked. So easy and fast I wasn't able to load film with mine plastic wheel, which I have on my 25 years old tanks. First thing was than very positive. Next things which surprised me very positively was how fast you can put liquid in it and how fast pour it off. With my tank those 550ml takes about 12sec to get in. With new Paterson it takes bellow 4 seconds!!! And get it off the tank is even faster. So great.
Last thing I was bit afraid how my agitation technique need to change when inverting this tank. And yes this need to be adjusted. When I flip tank upside down, it flow very fast into, normally, upper part of tank. When turning back to normal position it takes a bit longer. So quick flip bottom up and immediately back and wait for 3-5 sec until whole liquid is back down.
I have developed six rolls this evening so it will be some scanning this weekend.
All and all I am very positively surprised and I think I will but those 3 wheels versions. Especially as I won on eBay this week 5 wheels for tank and I have two home.

I have add small thing on my photography store. Now when same image is possible to buy in multiple versions, Open edition and Limited edition, it is noted directly above the image. So you can see that limited version costs 49euro but open edition you can buy for 15 euro. Take look for example on this print of Frozen fence

I have made few adjustments to open editions prints. I am changing things in my photography store to make them easier to shop. I am planning to add possibility to shop without creating account and also new adding news from shop to special RSS category at my RSS feed. That way announcements can be distributed by RSS way which I consider better than pushing e-mail.
I also but for two prints new images. Cross and Charle's Cat are now shown as they really look when you buy them. With pass-partout and signature. I will add this way of displaying prints in shop for all images. I think it looks better. Let me know what do you think, thank you!

Yesterday our friend Roy was visiting us. We had a nice dinner which partially Viera and partially Roy was cooking. Than afterwards we sit and discuss a lot of things until late night. It was a nice evening, full of interesting discussions and opinions. We would go further and it would take longer, but unfortunately it was Sunday evening and next day we had to go to work and therefore wake up early.
Today morning I and Roy had a strong morning espresso in our house and than I bring him to railway station. Now I am at my work and thinking about, how interesting it is to spend time differently than usual. You know not sitting like 'zombie' in front of TV, but use time for challenging discussions and listening to opinions of others. I believe people did that much more often before TV age.
I slept hardly five hours, but I am completely fresh and awake. Full of that old enthusiasms I use to have about ten years ago. It feels good and I should keep it this way.

I have watch a movie just now, movie based on book I have read when I was young. Not really important which movie it was. It just bring me some thought I and guess I will share it with you. I know I didn't put any picture on web for some time now. But let me talk for now and pictures will come later.

Humans tent to join to groups, you know friendship, colleagues or clubs and that kind of sorts. Also some groups are formed not by wish but by circumstances. Like workers in the same factory, company or people living in the same location. Few individuals they have also strong feeling to become individually recognizable and come out of this shade, uniformity or forced bunches. It is interesting that more people are creative or more they are intelligent more they have feeling that they need to be visible as unique been. It is not always true and I am not selfish and arrogant so I am saying "maybe I am wrong" but, juts leave it that I am right for the moment. Yes :-)
I also do not like to be seen as part of the machine, part which is not important just makes things easier to go if we are millions. But I do not want to be that I want to be seen as somebody who stands up and creates something which is unique. I do try it with photography, but do I try it right? (and yes another sign, doubt)
Often I have feeling that I need to create something which is appreciate which I can sell and get some money back, but that is not goal, goal is to express something something which more people can Identify, something what other do not know they feel or do not know how to express. I try and will to try to express. It would be great if I am able to make things which somebody can identify as its own feelings. Isn't it great when image you created is felt by somebody else like his own feeling, memory, wish?
You tell me!

Last few days flowed like a spring water. Fast and smooth. I didn't noticed how fast it was. It is more than six weeks I didn't post any image and writing is also very much behind. New year is few days far and it is normally time for making some decisions. No no do not worry I am not going to write them here and even I am not sure if I am going to make some.

What I like to write about is small even which happen few days ago and let me thinking. My son David brought, last day of school, home his paintings and other creations. Between them was quite big painting of an angel. I liked it very much and told him so. His reply was:
"That is nothing to compare what we doing with my friend. It is not finished yet but it is a huge tree in the middle and on left side are people happy and smiling and on the right side everybody is sad and cloudy.".
Immediately I saw a photo like that. And I told him I will make photo with the same idea. I really find it very interesting. But he reply that I can't do it that it is his idea and he like to paint it with friend. I can't make photo like that. What let me think is that I am not having such a ideas anymore. Why is that. It is not any difficult it is just simple idea which can work very well. Why mind, like mine which is busy with stupid things about keeping family economically running is not able to create simple nice idea which can be easily shared with others.
Being busy with everyday monotone and repeating things, feels like robot and all thoughts are also dissolving in this robotic routine. Isn't that scary?

Every summer, in past few years, a lot of trees are burned in south of Portugal. Also when we were there year ago, we were driving through the burned forests. It was extremely quiet there, no sound except wind. I wanted to take some pictures, but road was very narrow, curvy and no place to park a car. Suddenly I have break and parked at the edge of the road. Viera get really scared from such a sudden breaking. She though we going to crash. I believe her tension was in most part created by our surroundings. Algarve, Portugal, Europe.

One of the satisfied customer, who bough prints few weeks ago and unpacked it under Christmas tree wrote me nice lines about the Wharf -23C print, he bought:

"Having been there myself (although not at -23 degrees), I really like the way the cityscape has been "caught" in the frame. I liked it on the website, but seeing it printed and framed on my living room wall makes it really stunning.

All the detail, the shades of grey, the long shadows: for me, it's a perfect picture. Until I make something like that of my own, this one will remain on the wall."

After I put new photo and some more writings, I also put on-line few changes I am making to improve my site visibility in world of search engines. Maybe it is just coincidence, but today number of visitors rise by 300% comparing to day average in last few weeks. It seems that I just need to be more active here on web as well. Anyway is nice to see that you like to come back.

I am bit experimenting with Technorati blog search. Here you can see my Technorati Profile.

Grey day, grey weather and wet road ahead. Driving small streets in the fields of Belgium. Wiper is cleaning front window and I try to push shutter between its rounds.

As a continuation of my attempt to make this black and white photography site more visible, I am participating in Photoblogs.org. If you like my site, photos or text you can mark my site on photoblog as you favorite. This will give me more visibility in their ranking. As a result more users of photoblogs.org will have a chance to see my site.
Same apply for technorati.If you like it here you can add link to my web site to your blog and place your blog at technorati. That way again rating of my blog is rising and is more visible.

There was a once place and time when was not much to do. Rainy gray day. I have found group of kids having great fun with tire. They drag it up the slide and than let it run down. The slide was rather high, definitely above four meters at top. They enjoy the game even more when I start walking and stepping into the way of tire with my Nikon.

I put first picture from series of pictures which I took while being on short holiday in Belgium. It was autumn day full of rain and dull weather. As I wrote in picture text, there where kids playing with tire on slide. Some day later it came up that all those kids, about seven I guess, where from one family. They though I am crazy when I was stepping into way of the tire or claiming up to the slight just to get some decent shot.

I am putting this as a last picture of this year 2005, but it makes for me symbol for the new year. I like to fly higher and create better images in this coming year than I did ever before. I like to be free and let my mind and creativity produce images which will express my feelings and view the best way I can.

I do not really feel writing much. I have post last picture in this year and wrote few lines there. The end of year was always little special for me when I was small boy. I wasn't looking after parties or TV or any sort of entertainment like that. What I have really liked was having small radio next to me and in late night hours searching for strange sounds and stations on long wave frequencies. I love it. Often I was listening unknown language in the sounds of periodically returning volume waves. once receiving was god , few seconds later it was loosing strength and almost disappearing. Than suddenly coming back. I was lying in my bed listening those strange sounds, retuning sometimes and drawing crazy pictures in my note book. I love it. I didn't want to be disturbed and didn't like when my parents called my few seconds before midnight.

Somehow I feel the same way today. I like to be alone listening sounds of faraway cultures and having my dreams put on paper.
I wish you all the best for the next year!