Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

I have order my tripod. I had plans for this over last two or even more years. I have always borrowed tripods from friends. That was very helpful, but it never was the right thing. I feel much more better now when I actually earn by my photography for this. That was probably reason why I was waiting with that so long. At first place in last five or so years I didn't make photographs which would really required tripod. That has changed in past few month.

Now when I write about it, I suddenly realize, when I was in my very active photo years, around ten to fifteen years ago, I was actually doing that kind of photography. I made more or less stage scenes and was creating something myself. And somehow I have that feeling again. It is a bit contradictory with the suggestions I have received in last week from Hape and Caroline. Well, if I think about more maybe it is not. What do they suggest is to keep my style, with creating secret and dreamy feelings, with strong light composition. Something like example photos on my new www.richard-vanek.eu page. But now I am not going to wait for that right moment but I will make them happen. And yes for that I would need a tripod.

Those last few weeks where really excited and brought me a lot of energy.

In a last few days except painting walls, putting walls, cleaning and buying some more construction materials and tools I have spent some time on eBay. I was looking for few simple things which I miss and which are rather expensive to buy new these days. So I have bought Paterson tank for 3 films and 1200ml measuring cylinder, film squeegee and Nikon DK-8 for closing viewfinder and as a last thing remote shutter for my Nikon F100. I am still watching few other things like some b&w filters and Nikon DK-6 eye cup. All these things I bought for little money between 2-6 euros only the Paterson tank was little more but still less than half price of new. I hope all will arrive soon and in good workable shape. I am going to order some bottles of my favorite Paterson Aculux 2 developer. As you can see I am preparing for some serious shooting and developing.

Yesterday we arrived to the nice place called Burg-Haamstede in Schouwen, which is part of Zeeland. Already road here was so nice. I as a foreigner in this country, am always surprised when I see such a beauty. I definitely need more to travel around. Only little above 100km far and nature so nice. We went immediately on beach. And weather is showing us the best we can imagine. After a week of rain and rather cold weather we had 25C yesterday and all day Sun. Today forecast is even little better. So what we can imagine more after two weeks of working with house rebuilding ;-)

I also took bunch of films and my camera. It was while, when I was last time taking pictures. Yesterday I did two rolls on beach. I saw kids looking for some animals close to the wooden pols in the sea. I was wondering around them for over half hour. I hope I get some nice shots. Will see when I arrive back home and develop them. I need to buy polarized filter!

So it seems, another victim of digital (or have I to say real economy) world are chemicals from Paterson. Few days ago I decided to order again my favorite Paterson Aculux II and did get negative reply from my supplier. On my question what is going on I have received this answer today:

"Paterson stopped making the chemicals themselves a number of years ago, they have been getting Champion to make them to the original recipes until recently. Champion have now stopped and Paterson are not continuing the range with another manufacturer."

So what will I do next. I will receive last 3 liters of Aculux, but in a mean time I need to find something else. And I would hope something which will stay longer in this world, so I do not have to do next switch in one or two years. But what that can be? Do you have any suggestion for acutance developer like Aculux II?
My supplier suggested Fotospeed FD10, I never heard about it so I have no idea if I can trust it to stay next 5 years at least.

It is so nice to rest on beach. And it is also so surprising what a beautiful weather we have got. Fourth day in row is nice sunny almost no clouds and only little wind. I feel like I am somewhere in south and in reality I am only around 20km far from our house. Isn't that great?
I have made quite some photos and looking forward to develop again. Mostly these are shots from beach or some night shot around lighthouse.
I must say I needed this holiday really a lot.

After I have got the bad news that Paterson is not producing chemicals anymore I have wrote email directly to them. Today I have received answer. The answer is actually kind of optimistic. Please read for yourself.

Quoting Roger Parry from patersonphotographic.co.uk::
The situation is that our sub contractor who mixed our formulations as closed its UK plant leaving us without a chemistry producer. We are trying to find a replacement contractor who can manufacture the chemistry a reasonable cost. So although we are currently in a no stock situation there is a possibility that we may be able to re-introduce.
we are making efforts to rectify the situation but that there is no firm news at this point in time.

I am not very active in recent few days on this journal. Well reasons is quite few.House is still not ready even one room needs just good vacuuming and is fine. Most of my time now takes work and at evening I start preparing those three prints to send to Japan. I am ready with one. In a mean time, today actually, my new Manfrotto 055PROB with 322RC2 head arrived. I reconfigure immediately handle for left hand usage. It was my idea from beginning that I will use left hand for moving camera on head and right hand for focusing and shooting. I didn't do any real life test yet, but I am so happy that after so many years I finally have got decent tripod.
My Foma 200 films will arrive in one and half week I hope. I was expecting to have them already for one month but things are changing.

Yesterday we (me and Viera) had been interview by Christine Otten. It was very nice two hours of talking. She is a interesting person and even two hours was not enough for all to tell I am glad that we know each other now and can keep in touch. I always missed contacts in this country. After six years it is maybe going to get better. I only need to learn and use Dutch language more and be active in talking to people.

Well so is it day after day in beautiful hot weather. I hoe I can soon develop films from out holiday last week and also see some experience I have made with new filter and other equipment I have bought on eBay.

I think I need to stop with all those shopping. Actually I did now I only receive all the goods I have bough in last week or so. Yesterday I received bottle of fotospeed FD10 developer and orange filter. I am very interesting to try this FD10. There is very little information about it, but what I have found is that supposed to be even better than my favorite Paterson Aculux II. It seems like order of this one from speedgraphic is on back order already for week. Maybe I just will cancel it.
I still have little problem, our home is not completely recovered after rebuilding and still few things has to be done. And before I do anything for myself I need to finish last two prints for sale. Hopefully over weekend I will finished them. I feel little guilty that I am not done with them yet. I need to get organized again ;-)

When I write about shopping, there is one more to be done. I am planning to buy set of b&w filters. Some how I have got to this idea of filters. I would love to try some crazy effects and also work again with polarizing filter. For this thing I need to travel little and that will be Sunday.

I have just return from Haarlem where I bought from Kaspar set of seventeen black & white filters for 52 and 62mm mounting. I would like to thank him this way. I already did try orange on my way back from him. I have plans to do some set of shooting with some more filters and same subject to get feeling how do they behave. Yes I read about it in books, but you know personal experience is the best way.

Today I was fixing last walls in the second room I was making last few weeks. You must be tired of this construction notes. Probably expecting more photographic oriented texts ;-) I am sorry, but you need to wait for that little bit more.

So I was fixing this wall after Viera took wallpaper off. As I looked over it, it feels like map of history. You can find small holes and you can guess: Here small picture was hanging and here few centimeters left some series of three small picture of somebody else from some other time was. You look above and you find four big wholes with plastic fitting in them. Probably some kind of bookshelf was fixed there.
As I was looking over those holes I was imagining people living in this house years back. What do they hang here, what they taste was like. Do they read a lot of books or they hang TV set there,or flowers?
My wall will be now nice and flat, I roll over the history made it difficult to discover, but still in future some new exciting methods of looking int the wall's past will be discovered, I am sure about it.

When Sun raised, we left street of Gamla Stan and come to a wharf. Water was much hotter than air, so all over water steam was slowly flowing. In this steam Sun was rising, new day!

'Frozen Sunrise' photo I published few years ago. It was made in winter 2002/2003 in Stockholm. As I was printing this picture first time after I did in 2003 and I have made quite a few adjustment. Adjustment which I made differently those three years ago. As result of that I also updated this image on web.
This has very much to do with approach I like about limited editions of prints. I guess you read my little article about it named Limiting Print Editions? and maybe you even read a lot about it on Lens Work web page. This case really nicely illustrate approach of different print editions of each photograph. Now I am printing it quite differently than I did in 2003. And if I ever will print this image again in few years I believe it will be looking different again. And that is beauty of it. I change, technology changes so does the result of it.

So, today is over and I was whole day preparing selection of fifty photographs from whole my work in last five years. It is over 25 000 photos. I made effort in last four weeks, whenever time allowed, to go over all these pictures. I must say it was interesting, but tiring. I came out with around 200 shots. And today I cut it down to 48. I need to print them, only simple direct print in rather low quality. Important is to see composition. I decide to print it on A5 size, two print on one A4 sheet. What happen was interesting after two hour print I run out of ink. So in a middle of the night I start filling cartridges of my epson 2100 with fresh ink. Than you need to wait for some time and I start printing last about 14 sheet just few minutes ago.

Tomorrow I visit Caroline Schroeder and Hape Smeele with these prints and we will make selection of 10-15 final prints.
As I mentioned earlier in this journal, all this is kind of preparation for making portfolio of my work in last five-six years. There was also idea of Caroline to make solo exposition. That would be my first solo in The Netherlands. I must say, somehow I have feeling that I do like to make different work now and my older stuff is not the best I can make and maybe is not the thing I like to present now. I need to think more about it and hopefully tomorrows visit will clear my mind in this topic.

Yesterday we had very nice evening with Viera and Caroline Schroeder and Hape Smeele. Nice food and time spend over selecting my photos. Caroline and Hape very extremely helpful. They always gave me so much energy. After the evening, we left almost at 22:00, I knew much more about myself, my photos and about the direction where I want to go with my photographs. This is so extremely useful, especially at the moment when you not consider your past work worst much.
When I was making pre-selection of 200 and than 50 images, in a certain moments I wasn't sure where I am going and what I want to create by selecting particular shot. I must say I was kind of disoriented. After yesterday's evening I know exactly. You can watch a process of selection on my new web page. There you will shortly see around sixteen shots we selected yesterday. Set of photographs will change in next month as I will work with better idea in my mind.

I am so glad that I know Caroline and Hape!

Monday I have saw book by Dutch photographer Machiel BOTMAN named Heartbeat. After flipping pages full of these amazing photographs I realize how far I am from it. I liked very much his images full of tender and symbols. Together placed with few lines of text he creates unforgettable memory of his mother and in viewer emotions which are hardly to describe.
I looked little more and found some images of his work and information about his next book Rainchild which I have ordered. I must say I rarely by photo books. I always was bit afraid of looking on other photographs because I had feeling that I will copy them. The few I couldn't resist I have on my shelf and looking at them from time to time bring me inspiration and energy.

As I have promissed I am now uploading into www.richard-vanek.eu images Caroline and me selected Monday evening. When this is up I am going to make some more searching looking and selecting. So some images can move in and out. This selection process is very interesting. I believe, it is something like editing of a movie. You have all material done and now you like to make it perfect together.

Long summer days were ending. Shadows becomes longer and longer. Slowly the cold was coming, but we were still playing. You only realized how dark it was when your mom called you and you raised your head and saw the stars...

Winter evenings starts very early. Every evening when afternoon school finished or I had to wait for bus from evening art school, I looked into the lights. Light on walking path or street lights and watching snow flakes slowly falling in that white light, like a crystals.

Dirty window and wooden frame loosing paint. The paper flowers from kids who left school four years ago. All and all is old, empty school where some of us learned to read and write, where we saw first time miracles...

As a child I was helping my mom with cooking cakes and other nice stuff for Christmas. Long winter evenings and I was sitting behind big table in a kitchen, my legs swinging in the air and a lot of nice and tasty things on table...

I have received the book from Machiel Botman which I have ordered last week.It arrived yesterday and I looked in it immediately. Flipping through the pages now, reading occasional page of text. These texts are kind of pieces of thought. They do not have really any connections between each other. They create feeling and touch images which one can see before text page appears. That is nice touch, makes you come back in your mind to the image you saw before.
Sometimes I feel text is really broken to small pieces, pieces which sometimes miss me completely. But as one sentence says: Knowledge is like possession, it turns life into prison.

Some images are excellent, some I must say it, tell me nothing. Somehow I have feeling his other book, named Heartbeat Seems to be better, at least I like it more. But let not judge it to soon. This last book feels not so nicely tight like first one. I have feeling like selection of images doesn't work together that well as in the Heartbeat book.