Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

Friday was rather important day for me. As you may know I was looking for new opportunity and seems like I did have found one. There are still few questions to be answered, but in general deal is made.
Saturday I went with me two friends to the yearly trip in Belgium. Our trip, this time second time, has one subject and that is good beer. We decide to search the city of Gent now and we didn't fail. We tasted and brought home quite a few different brands of beer.

And also some info, news from Sunday. I have just developed next bunch of six rolls from Prague's trip.

Well you think you see light at the end of the tunnel. You are full of hope, when you come there you realize you know nothing about yourself and you forget your trip in the tunnel. You got until the end, but it is not coming to the new light things it is the end. Time is gone and you stayed still all the time, even you thought you were moving...

I was hoping I can show you new photo today, but day turned out completely differently. You know, and yes you know! Some things are turning the way you do not expect. Isn't that always like that? This time it was, in a certain sense, very positive. You do not see new shot. I saw more, not only picture. I saw a light! Why? Well you need a different point of view, the point, from which you can see what other can't see, normally. Today was a not normal day for me and I saw more.

All these normal days, don't they feel like ever repeating story, the days like other? We need to make a difference to see a special way. It is not special because we are more, it is special because one feel it differently. Feel and see the way it supposed to be, the way which takes you out of the rhythm.
I wish you all to have every day, the day! But you need to do something for it, something you can remember. Because one day you will not be here, you will be nowhere. And to keep that for little longer you need to create and not CONSUME!

Yesterday I have receive book from Rocky Schenck, most of his photographs you can see in paul kopeikin gallery. It is such a pleasure to look at them. Well look at them and you will see. Dream world of your inside is there on his photos. Isn't that great to take pictures of our inside world? he made it!

Ever wonder why they go away? They are big people you are small and they leave you on your own. Eventually they come back, but the moment when they go, can't be forgotten.

Soon we will see photographs she made in Prague...

Today I have received nice email from George. I do not know him, this was a first time he ever write tome. That makes it even more special to me:

Thank you so much for rekindling my desire to start shooting again. Your work is inspirational and very beautiful. Reading your text you remind me of a young man who considered photography a voyage of discovery until he lost his way. Many years and cameras later I am stimulated into trying once more to see the world with new eyes. In some ways you remind me of Josef Sudek, in the best possible sense.

Whole live is just a shadow, looking at it, but mostly ignoring and only floating in it until end will come. It will disappear same as a shadow when sun is eclipsed by the clouds.

Maybe it is for you absolutely not interesting, but I have spent couple of last days buying returning and replacing different bluetooth USB dongles and USB HUBs. I must say there is so much rubbish in this area. Everybody want to sell you anything. Very difficult to get oriented. I have USB 2.0 card in my PC with 5 USB ports. I bough web cam and that one is 1.1. I bought USB bluetooth dongle (USB 2.0) and they are killing each other. Oh it is rather terrible. I spent so much time with this, today I though all is solved as I went to almost the most expensive stuff they have in local shops. But still after I plug in all looks very good. When my friend called me over skype my bluetooth headset start working, but only for few second when video kicked in. Than I lost whole bluetooth device and my friend's voice switched to speakers. For some reason my mic in PC doesn't work. Well it is kind of mess.
I am going to try solve this but putting USB dongle to the main USB board and leave camera in USB HUB. Wondering if it ever will be working as expected. I was in shop to change these things already three times, soon and they will recognize me from the distance :-(

I have notice that on Internet Explorer my web has extra spaces. I fixed that problem before, but probably i have modified that piece again and this fix get lost. Today I have fixed that again so people who are using IE5 or IE6 and higher should see my front page correctly now.
I would like to ask you, if you using other browser than firefox (my default) let me know if some pages are not displayed as you would expect. Maybe konqueror or Opera browser could be the case. Thank you very much for your help.

Just a touch of light, can make a difference!

When you are tired sitting in a tram on your way from work, your view is limited. You feel like in tunnel, all unimportant is blured and shivery is your reality.

I write here always some text, now I just have no idea what to write. Tell me what this picture, if anything, reminds to you. Thanks!

Sunday autumn lunch in the garden. Sun is sharp, but still has a little power to warm us up. We have ordered our meal in this beautiful garden restaurant, but one chair is empty. Karol is missing, and we do not mind.

Sun is shining from the last power, autumn, table in garden restaurant is ready. Great Sunday afternoon!

I always try to write almost every day. Somehow it is not happening this last few weeks. There is a plenty of new photos, but seems like I have nothing new really to say. Why is that, I ask myself. I really do not know, but it feels like photos become more important lately than words. All photos you see in last three weeks are from my almost five day stay in Prague. It is just selection as I develop negatives. Yes I am still busy. Day before yesterday I developed my first batch of Fomapan 400. I didn't make any high resolution scans so I can't tell about quality, but feels quite ok.
But back to the writings. A lot of happen in last few days, a lot of things which kind influence my future. I approach this journal more like my artistic view than my daily diary so that is why I am not writing about it here. I hope once I find my balance again and bit more time for myself and my thought, than I will write here more again. Until than there will be only photos and very rare some text.

Lot of work had been done in last few days and seems like time is flying even faster. I was busy with different kind of things. I try to expand my USB connectors and I must tell you this is nightmare. You never know what is 2.o and what is 1.1 until you connected. I tried about four types of hubs, but none of them really worked perfectly. I expand number of my USB devices quite a lot in last few days and still having a problem with connecting all of them the way they work fast and do not block each other.
I also got new mobile from my friend xenon :-D, we spent some nice time in school holidays about 10 days ago in his home in Germany. We visited great museum and saw Concorde and TU-144 among other things like, Ferrari's, porches. It was great time, but those not complete four days just went too fast.
I am also trying to setup my satellite receiver which has Linux in it. Fighting with it quite a lot as I need to use my cryptoworks card to descramble certain channels. I like to get rid of cable TV as it is become very expensive.

And so life goes. I have got few inquiries about my web shop and what is about month eBay post. Well I am sorry for all that myself. It is again the end of month and I have next chance, will see if I miss it this time again. 1. November is the date when I open my web shop last year. I closed it six month after it. 1. Nov seven years ago is also date when we move to The Netherlands. It seems to be all too much symbolic. So I should use it for something magic :-)

As I am switching job in short while I was also busy to solve ever lasting problem to have private email, links, notes and all other stuff on one place and accessible wherever I go. One think is buy some device, PDA or small notebook or something. But that you get tot he situation I already was that you get notebook from your work and you need to carry two. I do not like put my personal stuff to office notebook. On other hand even if I would do that, I have another problem: using both home computer and work computer, so half of mails is on one and half on other and also links, email addresses and so.
PDA solution seems to be nice as you can sync with both computers, even it is not always working. But there is even bigger problem and that is that PDA has limited choice of soft and you can easily run (and you surely will) that you like to use something which fits your needs better that what is available for you PDA.
So I choose USB solution. I have my soft and my data on USB stick. I bought 1GB, USB 2.0 stick. I am running now portable Opera, GAIM and some other tools from it. It is reasonable fast and I have the same data and soft every time I have windows computer near me. So home and at work. Possible problem could be that you may be using different Operating systems, than you could have emulation and boot from USB inside of your hosting OS. This of course has impact on speed. But in my case it is windows is 98% of the time.

I also get little boost with nice PDA I have got from my friend, so even in rare occasions I need to connect to Internet make photo or write note I can use this PDA for it. I think I have found nice solution