Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

Yesterday we have returned from our trip to 200km far capital of Slovakia, Bratislava. We saw our friends and we are quite tired from extream temperatures and short sleeps :-)

Now I am sitting in new cafe in north Slovak town called Namestovo. It looks very luxurious. Service is very nice, but some people who came here are playing roles of rude and hard persons. Feels like "I am god here!". But I wanted to write about something else, I like to write about feeling which is hidden under this narrow layer of dirty words and comparing latest mobiles and sexy girls. I like to write about feeling I have got from a few friends from childhood I have met in last two weeks. It is nice feeling of different culture, the culture of creativity which seems to have one extra layer on top of it. The layer of money making. This is necessary to have resource for a decent life. A lot of my friends would like to do something else than they do now, something less commercial, something more creative. Few of them are lucky to have right combination of this, but some have only dreams.

Let's come back to that creativity atmosphere which is more present at south than here in the north. It would be so much intense to work on some nice photographs here than in quite and comfortable life in the Netherlands. This country is full of contrast. Contrast between people, live style, level of education and culture. It is more difficult to find same in the Netherlands than here. But once I would live here I would be part of the same game and would probably force to play and than I wouldn't see this so clearly as I do now. I am also not sure if I wouldn't feel same feeling which drives me out of this country six years ago. Feeling of disappointment and powerless against human stupidity and arrogance.

Now, next to me bunch of those kind of people are sitting. When I came here I have felt nice almost poetic feeling and now it is gone. Those people really drive me out. It is a pity that such a things are happening. Arrogance and vulgarism is the things which is around. Even a lot of people do not like it, but there is nothing what you can do against it. Only, maybe, if one creates something which will stay against it. Something like nice books, great photographs or other things which will stay here and people can find it if they looking for it. This can help souls to survive and not become another sheep which is hunt by wolfs around.

After discussion with Andrej Ban and Roman Harvan I have my mind full of thoughts about what kind of photography I would like to create. I have looked through the book which Andrej suggested and I have also saw and bought some other books from Slovak documentary photographers. I must say that real life documentary shots, which I am calling reportage photos is not my style. I like to create more lyric pictures which not necessary need to be nice, but they need to have power of expression which will underline story contained in the photograph. Theme of more deep values than latest dress, hair styles and mobile phones. Theme of soul and power of live of an ordinary people.

We have returned Saturday, but I am writing now after two days of little relaxing and unpacking. I must say I am glad that we are back home. Three weeks is quite a long time and it will take me a while to get back to daily rhythm. Not that I like that but it makes kind of space for things to be done. One can plan better. I have brought about 25 rolls of film to develop. After our bathroom's "upgrade" I still do not know exactly how I am going to develop these films.

I was playing from yesterday a little with proper formating and proper date handling of my journal entries. It seems to be better now. I have added real title to each entry and I am able now to have multiple independent entries in the same day with different titles.
I also solved the problem with time zones. Now correct date in GMT is displayed for a particular item in the journal and is easier for youto find out your time. Take a look at journal page!

Already from time we returned back from holiday I have noticed nice wild tree between huge corn plants. This tree, I do not know its name, has fruit like a small red balls, growing in clusters. And the corn is huge above 2m and still quite dark green. I was planning to go there and take a picture.
And that happen today. After long morning of shaving and showering ;-) I have noticed that sun has very contrast light beaming under the dark clouds. And I knew it could have add extra effect to this lost tree in corn field. So I run on bike and catch that light still with wet hair and made few shots. I am glad that I managed it and I hope it will turn good.
You see, all the time I am talking about more serious project and stuff like that and now I see something nice in good light and I just take a picture of it. No thinking about nay project just momentary feeling. Does it lead somewhere? I have these kind of question all the time in my head.

Now I only need to restart my film development process again in new bathroom. I must say that I am bit hesitating as I do not know exactly how I am going to wash the film in the tank. Well I need to sort that out.

Yesterday I went on long plan meeting with friends from fotoacademy. Even quite a few of the reply about six weeks ago only four of us made it yesterday. On one side is a bit sad, on other maybe good. We had a time and space to talk about photography and what we were doing in last almost 12 month. We had a nice time and I would like to meet them again after some time. One can easily see where each of us is going in photography and what are plans and targets. I saw some prints from Island from Anton and nice photo series of Els. She is really making nice work and she has a lot of ideas and that is what I am missing lately. She is making shots from hotel rooms, and those has nice effect of lost space and persons. It is so unpersonal but at the same time bit nostalgic. I like it very much and it is in color :-)
She showed us also some series shots from wet train window. Again it has a feeling inside and was nice that everybody could see something else in it. Nice work Els!

About a week ago I have received prints from Dave Beckerman. I won one on ebay and he was so nice send me few test prints with it. I could see on my own eyes how does prints from Epson 4800 using K3 inks looks. He is using Ilford Smooth Pearl paper. Prints where not sprayed and one was done on Epson 220 printer.
All prints look great and I have to say it again great. Feeling of this Ilford paper is like air dried RC paper. It is think enough to have feeling of photograph and not paper print. And quality of reproduction black and white tone is very very good. I have few prints from Dave done few years ago when he was printing in darkroom. I have trued to compare details in dark areas with those. I have to say that prints are slightly different but none of them is missing anything. Shortly they are top class black and white print and doesn't matter if they are done by inks or by exposing to the light in darkroom. Well done Dave I wish you more such a nice prints!

Yesterday I have bought new USB 2.0 card for my computer. Today I have replaced my old one with this new. Why I did it? I have this well known "Delayed Write Failure" for some time when I was using my external USB disk. I tried a lot of things I check if packet's size is not increasing above certain max level, I disable caching and all the tricks I can find on Internet. Last one was suggestion that USB2.0 cards based on VIA chip have these problems and the ones based on NEC chip do not. True is that I never had a problem with this external disk on my notebook. When I checked it out I find out that notebook has NEC chip for its USB 2.0 ports.
So I have bought yesterday NEC based cards. Now I have 5 USB 2.0 ports two more than before and I do not have a problem with my external disk anymore. What is also interesting, later today I have realized that I sometimes had a problem when printing to my USB printer. After printing the file left in printer spool queue and next file wasn't possible to print until I didn't restart printer spooler service. Also my USB scanner had from time to time strange behavior. And yes, I am printing today already fourth print and no problem and my scanner is doing third multi pass scan without any glitch. This wasn't possible before!
I am happy, seems that new NEC based USB 2.0 cards solve all problems.

I had a bit of crazy yesterday and today morning. Few days ago I decided to participate on my first black & white competition. So last two days I was printing and packing prints for it. It should be in UK following Thursday so I was running today to post office before they close. And yes I need to drive to next city as we do not have any post office here, which is open at Saturday.
I have submitted totally twelve, yes you reading it right 12 prints. Tree separate prints to tree different categories (People, Places and Still life) and one series of four prints to portfolio category. Competition is name B&W photographer of the year by B&W magazine published in UK. Well it is my first attempt and let see how it turns out. Results will be known in December so time enough.

After I have printed so many prints in such a short time I need to do some cleaning and other maintenance stuff with my printer. I need to established "SIPHON BREAK" which i lost while using so much black ink. As I had trouble to see ink going to cartridge through pipe, I used all of it in cartridge and therefore lost black color completely. I was doing all the tricks and nothing helps. I was desperate and I am still not sure if I will recover completely my CFS with MIS inks. Now I have original color cartridges in the printer and seems that I have got all inks back. I am leaving my printer to sit for few hours before I put back my CFS with MIS UT2 inks. I hope I will have my complete printing solution back Monday latest. I must say this was not nice experience, but all I did it myself. I need to be more careful next time.

Yesterday evening I have all color restored. Well all, black as well but not fully. Some nozzles were still blocked on black ink. I let it stay over night. I didn't test nozzles this morning as I had terrible night, full of headaches and I slept only about 2 hours. Now I am at work and I will see when I back from work if printer is better. I also used all rest of colors in old Epson cartridge to recover nozzles so if there are still blocked I have to ways to go. Either I buy new Epson cartridges and do more cleaning cycles and purge prints, or I connect back my CFS and do those purging with MIS b&w inks. Maybe that is a better way as I need to purge color ink out of the printer anyway.

I am having terrible headache from yesterday afternoon. I try to sleep through night but I could do only maybe two hours in one go, otherwise it was small sleep and wakeup every 10/15 minutes. Today it was very bad around lunch time. It is little better now, I hope it will be over soon. I am having this regularly and except some exercises I never did anything much against it. Maybe I should start focusing on it more intensively.

Nozzle check is perfect on my Epson printer now. Only one exception last black nozzle is blocked. Hopefully it will be clean up tonight. I have bought new color cartridge and made couple of cleaning cycles. Now it is almost perfect. I leave to sit over night and morning I will do last nozzle check before I put CFS back and do purging procedure.

Well, over night last nozzle didn't recover. It starting to look seriously I never had nozzle on my printer blocked for such a long time. I need to buy original black cartridge to force it little bit more. The one I have it now for black color is from 2001, and maybe it is not as fresh as necessary for recovering this nozzle. I hope so, even the color was good enough.

I have bought tonight new T007 black cartridge for my Epson 890 and did few clean cycles and all nozzles are clean now. I am happy that I didn't destroy my printer with a stupid mistake I did this weekend. After I'll come back tomorrow from work I will place CFS back to printer and will do cleaning and purging of color inks out of the printer's heads. I have idea to actually do real prints. It could have nice funny unreal colors. Why not at least I will not kill ink and paper just like that and maybe something nice will go out of it :-)

Shortly, I need to tell you that. About 60 minutes ago I put back CFS with MIS UT2 inks and after three cleaning cycle and one purging pattern all s back. All nozzles are ok and I can print again in black and white!

Yesterday night I saw old movie 'Educating rita'. I really enjoy it. I never saw it before and it was nice refreshing and funny. I like to much this scotisch (was it scotich?) accent and all the movie atmosphere. More or less based on that I went today to searchs some books about photography. I mean about approaching photography. Books which doesn't tell you any technical details how you should take photographs, but books which describe how people are looking on photographs. I found quite a lot of books about history and theories of photography, but not really a book which would describe different approaches to create photographs. Do you know about any such a book?

While walking the other day on street of Gamla Stan (Stockholm) I have met in this narrow stairs one Japanese guy. We met couple of times after this one. Each of us walking around and taking pictures. It was quite funny to meet him for about seven times.

Again my favorite town Stockholm, shot from 2004 when I was there last time. Walking around a town I have found few guys skateboarding. Weather was quite bad, but I did anyway about two rolls.

At the end all with printer is all right. I was afraid, after I recover all nozzles and printing seems to be no problem anymore, my printer never finish print the whole page. I have no idea what was wrong. I even install QuadToneRIP to try alternative way of printing, but result was the same. Luckily turning off and on and cleaning printer memory together with restarting system cure all problems. Today I have printed four prints from Stockholm. Two of them you can see on web.

I am making small plan how to proceed with my photography. I had nice discussion today with Viera and we made some points on paper. I wish this will turn to more speed. I am writing this probably for 100th time but I am planning to open web shop. Now latest date is 1st of September. I still have few problems on web site and not final selection for prints, but hopefully I will manage.

I was today first time experimenting a bit with different way of scanning. Up to todays I always scanned RAW 48bit and than took green channel for processing. It was because I couldn't use 16bit with my old scanner from certain point.
Now when I have new scanner (well, already few month) I realize I could try to scan 16bit again. I must say it look quite good and mostly saves me a trouble to get balanced b&w picture from raw scan. I scanned only two pictures so I am far from concluding, but maybe it will be good way. What I also need to get little more experience with is grain dissolver which my Minolta DIMage 5400 has. I am scanning without it all the time, so it would be interesting to try use it. Multi pass scanning works nice, I use normally four path one to get nice more consistent results.