Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

I just turned around and we have June here. Incredible, so many things has happen in last few days. Mostly family kind of. I am soon traveling to Tokyo again. I am really looking forward to it. I am busy with preparing for it as well as with other things, you can guess. Oh yes it is my move towards digital world of image capture.

You may or may not know that I am working as trainer/coach for Philips Healtcare. I am focusing on giving courses for Medical software for handling medical images. One of the topics I give is also calibration. The calibration sheet, test image which our application use is in one of the simple and most useful I have saw. It is not simple gray 21 steps, but it is whole page sized image containing patches of the same color on different places of the sheet.
I am planning to use similar aproach for calibrating my printer to the new ink and QTR RIP I am going to use in next months.

This simple but smart way ensure that by averaging measurements from different places of the paper we eliminates problems caused by problems on paper or on certain position of printing head of the printer.

I do not know if it is just coincidence (does such a thing exists?) but I just listened podcast from Alan Watts about Zen Buddhism and I am leaving in one week to Japan.
I do not know very much about it, but I like it rather a lot. I need to learn more and I may have it actually from first hand ;-)
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You may wonder why I am not posting that much in this blog in last few weeks. Well it is as simple as you can imagine. I am just overloaded with other stuff and lot of things, not only thins blog suffer from it. This summer weather we are having here brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm into me. And I like it very much, my head is full of ideas plans and other things. You certainly will see soon some fruits of it.

On each of my images you can vote, you can add comment. Now I published top list at my journal page. You can see top rated photos, the one which are hot, so which has received the most votes in last time period and then few of my own favorites.
It looks like kind of sport and yes it is one so let see if that will any influence on the votes and ratings and more importantly on amount of visitors ;-)

enjoy your evening!

Summer holiday in my old school, 2007, Zilina, Slovakia

Yesterday I visited small cinema in Tilburg. The FilmFoyer brought me memories from the time I was visiting very often Film Klub in my home town Zilina. Tuesday evenings with a great movie in small film hall. Than discussions about a film in cafe to the late hours with friends. I loved that.
Yesterday I had the same. Seeing LE VOYAGE DU BALLON ROUGE with Juliette Binoche was areal joy. It is that kind of European movie (even this time directed by Taiwanese director) where the story is very subtle, but after the movie you are full of certain feel. It is just all over. I love movies which brings me to that state of mind.
If you have a chance go a see this movie.

I will be close to lunch ;-) in 24 hours from now. Than I fly around half of the Earth and land in Tokyo. It has been year I was there last time. This year I will stay almost double time there. I am really looking forward to be there again.
I will write again from Tokyo.

Because I am traveling I am not able to deliver any of prints you purchase from my web store until 7th July. You can still make orders, but I will be able to process your orders only after that date.
Thank you for understanding.

Today I have arrived in Japan. Ten hours flight in economy class is not a pleasure, but possible ;-) It is afternoon here and with seven hour jet lag I am feeling my energy is leaking somewhere. I need to take a bit of rest now so I can go on later and come to normal day/night rhythm soon.

Today is the first day when I use my own digital camera. Nikon D300 as expected with new 50/1.4 lens. This is note for pure historical reasons. So, if I am looking after few years (month,days,decades) when did I start, I can find it back it was today.

One of the first images I have took with my new Nikon D300 yesterday. Image is take at Abiko, Japan. I did very little editing as I do not have the proper tools here with me.

And now shot from the hotel. I am really curious what do you think. Thank you for your comment.

If you like to see something nice Look here and turn your sound on.

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And next shot from today's sunny Tokyo.

We had a excellent weather yesterday in Tokyo. So nice light. Here I like to share with you one shot I have done, this time in nice color.

Getting more and more confident with my new tool and 50/1.4 lens. This is shot last night in restaurant. Chair with late evening lights from restaurant.

Today afternoon I went to visit few photo galleries in Shinjuku part of Tokyo. I was looking to it for some time already. This place looked, based on information from web, as quite full with these galleries. I actually visited three, all of them in circle less than 200 meter ;-) I was very surprised by the size of them. I never been in galleries small as these. One or two rooms big like average European living room (6x8 meter at max, mostly smaller).
I realize what a wonderful idea this is. Such a small gallery has very nice personal feel. enough place for exposing 15-30 prints of normal gallery size.

I have made video from each of them, which I cannot post now as I do not have fire wire interface on my notebook. I will do so when I am back home. I visited :

• Place M - 3 floor of apartment building
• Sokyu-sha - 3 floor of apartment building
• Shinjuku-Gyoen Photo Gallery - almost part of photo shop

And that he was so close, but behind a mask.

Next photo from Japan, this time Abiko-city

Week ago Dirk made this image of me. And he was using a monster for making it. Just imagine the negative itself is almost as big as my face. 1:1 copy it is.
I have made few shots until he setup the monster. So here you can see dancing with the monster:

"How could it be that one day I will say goodbye to all of this and miss the lilac spring, the May times whistling on the wing, and the robin's kiss? In the summertime, when days and evenings are in rhyme, you will not find me in the grove among the lilies in repose or weeding in the garden path where scented seedlings hold on fast. When autumn falls I'll cast no shadow on the wall or hear the owl's haunted hoot high above the rotting root. When all is orange russet red I will not be with you in bed. The day the silent snow descends and lolls to sleep all living friends, I too will slumber in the earth among the seeds and squirrel's birth. Who will miss me? Who will care? When I am called and no one's there?" - Duane Michals