Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

In my search for lower sensitive film I have tried in past few days Foma 200 Creative and Ilford FP4+. I developed both of them with Aculux 2. With Foma, which I developed next three rolls this weekend I am slowly coming to the point when I am getting out of it what I like. First rolls had quite little details in shadows. Now I am using little bit strange timing of inverting while developing. Total time is 9:30. Complete schedule is following:

1x30 sec non-stop inversion
4x60 sec two inversion in 10sec
4x30 sec one inversion
3x60 sec no inversion at all

It is rather complex and I will try to simplify. Last three minutes with no inversion really help to bring some details from shadows without burning highlights.
Example from Ilford FP4+ you can see here. And from Foma tomorrow when I will scan last two rolls which I just hanging to dry.

On my way from work I stop sometimes with my daughter at playground. Lately when I was trying some lower sensitive films I did a lot of shots kids playing there. It was much easier to be there with my daughter than alone. Nobody was really bothered and kids had fun out of me. In this shot the girls further from camera were laughing on me as I was coming closer and closer to the front girls from her back. With 50mm lens I end up about 50cm from her, maybe even closer. And than she turn to find out what is that all about.

Yesterday was the last day of my first, non-solo, exhibition in The Netherlands. I went there and pick-up the prints. Results? Overall good feedback, more interest from the Dutch community (increase of web traffic from .nl by 300%), two orders. My feelings? Well, let's go on and make it next time even better.

Photo Wooden sticks is my promissed example shot done with Foma 200 Creative developed in Aculux 2 as described few days ago in this journal. I just printed it and is incredible sharp.

I find this nice texture. All dry wooden stick on a beach. Shot with Foma 200 Creative developed in Paterson Aculux 2.

I have ordered Fuji Across 100 and bought Kodak 125PX for my tryouts of lower sensitivity films. So far I quite like Foma 200 Creative, only problem is that 5 out of 8 cartridges were scratched by the container or something else I guess. This is clear indication that I am not going to use this film. I have few nice images which are marked like this. It is a pity, unfortunately is scratched so much that I can even repair in a software way without spending over 10 hours on one image. I did it for one and it is enough.
Work on my improved web site is almost at the end. Two new projects, better image view, nicer front page and few small enhancements are almost ready. Just to finish one project than I will make it on-line. Next step which is party done already is add articles as I promised.

I am always positively surprised by MIS Associates, Inc. It is the company producing great carbon pigment inks, known as UltraTone - UT, which I am using. I have order few times from them. They are just great, delivery from USA to Europe in less than six days. Always perfectm no complains.
Now again! 3rd of May I have order CFS system for my printer with new UT2 inks and yesterday 7th of May I have them here. Incredible!!!

I have received today from LensWork my order of CD of issues 1-50 and book from David Hurn & Bill Jay. Yesterday I have read few pages about life of David Hurn. Quite interesting, but always when I read about somebody life story I always have feeling, It was different that time, now this is not possible.

Today overcast morning, clouds completely covering sky. I went on bike to work as every morning. Lately I again taking my camera with me. As I was riding three school girls on bikes overtook me. I grab a camera and did few shots. Than we were approaching women with dogs and man with his own one. Dogs were faithing in the middle of cycle path. I did one or two shots as we were riding in between dogs. I hope I can have something nice there.
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But the day didn't end like this. At the evening I went with my wife to neighborhood village. Her colleague was playing on square with their local village orchestra. So I took the camera. In less than 30 minutes two and half roll. Some nice shots. It was fun again to take some pictures.

Both rolls from yesterday are drying now. Again I have to say I love combination of Fuji Neopan 400 and Paterson Aculux 2. It is such a pleasure to see perfectly developed negative. And after short inspection I can see there are few good shots.
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My Fuji Across 100 arrived. It took quite a time almost two weeks, I hope it was good to wait. I have also order just from curiosity film I never used and everybody is talking about. Kodak Tri-X. Fun is back again!

I put up new picture named "Everybody left, music goes on." from Tuesday evening. There is few more nice shots. They eventually come later.
I also received my long awaited Fuji Neopan Across 100 and Sunday I'll go with few photo friends on trip to Antwerp. Should be nice weather and I am looking forward to it.

One evening we went with my wife to a village, next to ours, to see local band playing. I took a lot of shots of empty chairs in front of the band in hope to get something nice. This is not perfect, but it is quite funny. Longer development blow sky a bit and head of conductor is little cut. Pity otherwise I think is not very bad.

This evening we went see some kids show in my children school. I was very very tired, so I didn't take a camera. I think I should. At the end it was a lot of fun. In such a moments like this, when I am sorry I didn't take a camera, I am wondering, should I take it always. If you have it and nothing turns to be interesting it doesn't matter. It is not big. If you do not have it and you see some nice things, then it sucks :-)

Today we are going play volleyball tournament with friends. I am not taking camera (again) as I will be probably playing whole day.
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This was very nice day. I played and I played surprisingly well. It was amateur tournament but it was a lot of fun and it help my body and mind to full relax. Afterwords we had a beautiful barbecue in very nice environment. Outside in quite big garden. Children has a lot of place to play and did. We were talking and discussing. A lot of different people were around. And guess what? I was missing my camera terribly.

Today we had a last meeting/trip with colleagues from Foto-Academy. We went to trip into near by city Antwerpen. Intention was to take some pictures on Sunday market and than visit a photo museum and have some nice dinner.
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All things turns out little different. As usually market was very very crowded and that is dissolving my ability to focus. Even I had few plans what to take pictures of, problem was that at the moment I went there I realize how useless and uninteresting to me is taking those pictures.
So I sit in café next to market and was drinking some juice and thinking what to do. I was watching people and going through my former plans for picture taking. I find out that my plan to shoot hands of people is maybe nicely done, but the results woudn't interest me much, the same was about some other details from market. I didn't really want to take pictures of part, details or similar cropped things.
I made a mistake I didn't select my plans correctly I didn't consider all possible effects and situation and didn't choose what is important for me. Now when is tomorrow I can see what I could do, but it is too late.
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The rest of the day my mood went down as I didn't even finished one roll. Photo museum was real disaster. I do not understand how one museum can display so little as in Antwerpen and well, somebody maybe like it but I have to force myself into it. In my humble opinion pictures which were there sucks totally. I force myself to like maybe two or three. But imaging totally on two floors (when excluding exhibition of magazines covers) was about 20-30 pictures. Completely useless, nothing telling pictures of size 1.5x 3 meters. Well maybe this is just my frustration from my failure that day. But I would ask my money back if that would be possible.
Dinner sisn't happen as suddenly nobody wanted to stay, it looks like not only me wasn't fully satisfied, but nobody said so. Well I knew now something more about myself.

I am happy for at least one think from my Sunday trip to Antwerpen. In the Foto-Museum I have bough a book from Henry Cartier-Bresson "de qui s'agit-il". I am going through it. At first I was thinking: "it is so many photos from him here that I can really see also those less famoused and therfore not as good". Well just oposite is true, more and more I lok at images I see that every one has its power. In every o ne I can find something. This is just unbelievable.

Week ago I have received CFS from MIS. I was planning to put it as soon as possible, but I am recently very busy and it seems to become every day norm. Maybe you remember I had this strange noise coming out of my printer for ages. Something happened and than every time cart with inks move it makes little "puk". From few days ago my printer was producing scratch on each paper.
I decide to open printer. First I want to clean it anyway before I put CFS and I also want to look why it is scratching the paper. I have found that on of so called pizza wheel is blocked and scratching a paper. And when I moved it a little and clean surroundings the "puk" sound disappear. What left is that the wheel is still little blocked and still scratching a paper even there is no sound anymore. I believe that cart with inks was hitting it for a while until it becomes blocked. I have no idea how I am going to fix that.
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I just solved it easily. I remove pizza wheels totally. It was rather easy just unscrewing the metal holding plate and pushing plastic pins I removed two pieces which carry all pizza wheels. I did test print and there is no marks at all. After close inspection I confirm what I though already one of the wheels was blocked and making mark on paper.
I also find out what was the thing making that puk, plock sound. It is a flat cable coming from printing had. As it folds it makes this sound by springing and hitting cover of the printer. If I can fix that it would be great.

So it looks, somebody hack into my webserver. Sorry for drop of the web pages for past four hours from 09:00GMT today.
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Yesterday on my way home I stopped with my daughter on playground. She went on swing and I took a camera with Fuji Neopan Across 100 and start taking few pictures of some boys playing soccer. Oh man, that was great I did one and half roll in few minutes and some extra shots of two girls playing next. It was going so naturally and kids were really nice. They were not bothered by me at all. I promised them to bring some picture when they are ready.
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As I never developed Across before I put only one roll in tank and developed for 12 minutes in Aculux 2 1:9. First minute I was inverting 15sec and than in each minute once in five second. Film looks well developed and is drying now. I will scan it at the evening and then see how it is in real. So far maybe little too contrasty, but let's wait.

I have just finished scanning of film from yesterday Fuji Neopan Across 100 developed in Paterson Aculux 2 1:9 for 12 minutes. It seems like shadows do not have any details and highlights are just about to be blowed. So I need to adjust time and agitation. I did first minute 15 sec non-stop inversions and than every whole minute one inversion in 5 sec. It seems that I need to make even less agitation to avoid blowing highlights but increase a time little to get shadows time to develop.
Or the other option overexposed a film little and shorten the time, while keeping same agitation.

I have developed next roll of Fuji Across 100. This time I have did little experiment, crazy agitation. I went for total time 15:00 with less agitation in hope to get little more details in shadows. So it was like this:

1 x  60 sec inversions first 30sec
5 x 120 sec every 2 minutes 2 inversions in 5sec
1 x 240 sec in these last 4 min only 2 inversions at begging

I was hoping that effective refreshment of developer for highlights will be like 12 min development and rest will help bring some details from shadows.
And how does it turns? Quite well, details in shadows are definitely better, but highlights are still too much developed. Next time I do how they suggest on Paterson web site.

Today I went to Belgium village called Doel. My friend went there few month ago to take some pictures which I saw. From that moment I was suggesting to him that I would like to go there as well. We never agreed on date so I decided to go alone today. Weather was rather changing but I was planning for it for few days already so I said today I go in any case.
I passed Antwerp and went by Ring two around harbor. I need to pay for tunnels and than I need to go across industrial zone. It was not really nice road to village. You know what is so special about it? This village (I only heard this) was kind of force to abandon. People where more or less forced to leave (I understand that the reason was extending harbor of Antwerp) and therefore you can find empty houses and lot of protesting words on walls. But what I have found wasn't that terrible. There were still quite a people living. Yes few houses were empty, hotels and restaurants as well (some still looks running), police office empty. On the other hand church in great shape.
So as I was approaching I was wondering do anybody want to live in this village anyway? If you consider this access through industrial zone. Channel on next side and. That shocked me the most, nuclear power plan from other side, just about 500 meters from village. If I am living there and anybody offer me house somewhere else I would go right a way :-)
But please understand that I have no knowledge about what really happened there and also my view is surely different from view of somebody who grow there and live whole live.
Anyway I didn't shoot a lot there. Just one roll, bad weather and also the atmosphere which was there Sunday morning wasn't really inspiring.
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I used Across and exposed it on 160 ISO. I developed it as suggested on Paterson web site 12minutes with first 30sec non-stop inversion and than 10sec each minute. I am not finished with scanning yet but it looks like not much shadows details at all.

In a last two days this server was attacked few times and therefore pages become unaccessible for a while. I am in the process of arranging new web hosting and soon these pages will be served from more secure system.
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I am already setting up my web pages on new web hosting server, problem is that without actually modifying DNS, so it is pointing to the new server I can't really make my pages fully test. So it is possible that I will need to update DNS before my pages are fully functional on new server. Please excuse these drop-outs in a few following days.

Dear friends, in a few next hours I will switch DNS record and from that moment piskoftak.com will be served from different IP, different computer and even from different country. My old 486DX with 16MB of memory and 1GB hard disk which was running this web site from 1997 will be replaced by professional web hosting service from YEGON.sk. I am glad I made this move as maintainng my own machine and its opertaing system from distance of thousands kilometers is time consuming job. Lates events, attacks to piskoftak.com just speed up my decision.
Last four days I spend with heavy work on move my web site. I would like to thanks persons from help desk of yegon.sk. I am very happy with them! They helped me with everything with great speed. If you ever will have a need form extremely good web hosting for extremely little money (~5 euro/month) contact them and mentioned piskoftak.com as a pointer. I will get two month for free and you will get great web hosting.
Yes their web site is in Slovak language, but they (I believe) speak English and software for managing your site is in English. If you like to know more, just write to me.

If you notice anything, which doesn't work, please let me know as well. Thank you!

PiskoFtak.com is now served from new web hosting provider. Please let me know any problems you encounter. Thank you very much for your help!

I was just looking over my three version of developing and exposing Fuji Neopan Across 100. I had only three of them and therefore I can't really make any final conclusion. I developed all of them in Paterson Aculux 2 1:9 at 20C. Conclusion is that film in this developer is ASA 100 or maybe even ASA 80 and good time for developing is 12 min with minimal agitation ( I used one inversion every minute). I need to see others, which I tried (Kodak 125PX, Ilford FP4+), but I am not sure if this will be film of my choice with this developer. At least for contrast subjects it have little problem. In low contrast seems to be quite nice.