Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

Quite a few new prints I have added to web shop. At the same time I have started huge Christmas discount action for period of one month. All prints are now discounted to 35 euro. I also lower amount of purchase to get free postage anywhere in world where Dutch TPG Post can deliver. So if you order now for more than 150 euro, postage will be free.

So now you have excellent opportunity to get original Christmas present in time for little money.
I am offering original Black and White Fine Art prints of my photographs. They are made by myself using latest archival technology of carbon pigment inks on Cotton Rag papers. Estimated time without any noticeable fading effect is over 75 years. All prints are size 20x30cm and are delivered in passe-partout 30x40cm. Prints are signed and numbered. Number of prints in one edition is limited.

After my long night yesterday, working on web shop, I was thinking today how I can attract more people to my pictures. There is certainly few ways. I was thinking about putting some prints on eBay and also on some local selling or bidding site in Europe.
I also need to do some advertisement on correct newsgroups for art and photography. In Europe would be nice to touch market in France and Germany. Of course my site is only in English so this could a problem. On other hand I do not loose anything if I try it.

One of our favorite games, when we were boys, was rolling down a hill. Preferably with grass and steep one, but a lot of times we didn't care much what was there as far as it was steep enough to roll fast. Sometimes in huge grass sometimes almost on hard ground. After rolling your stability was so low that you couldn't actually keep balance and stand up. You were always falling down hitting ground, mostly with head. It was a lot of fun.

I have got today package with new paper, some developers and small stuff for Nikon F100. The developers I like to use for low light shots with Fuji Neopan 1600. I bought Ilfotec DD-X and Tetenal Emofin. I used both before but none of them with Fuji Neopan 1600.
I also receive batch of paper for my prints. I am using recently PermaJet Image Life Alpha 310 paper. It is a little brighter than Hahnemuhle and I have specific profiles and curves for it. It make very nice prints.

What I really like are beaches in The Netherlands. There are no hotels or roads at all. Land is protected from sea by dunes. Sometimes you have walking path next to these dunes like the one on this photograph. I appreciate this natural and original look.

When I was young I love to go to secret places. Secret for me, places where I never been, which were dark and full of old things under the dust. At same time I was curious what is it there and afraid of unknown. Most of the time such a places where very quiet. The minimal sound makes me feel scared. But still I did dare to open old books and look into locked wooden boxes full of yellowed photographs.

Among the other things I tried to improve last week were also Project pages. I reorganize them a bit, joined text pages with pictures and improved the navigation. Now it is the same way as galleries.
Last week I had extend Childhood Project by one picture and today I have added another. I am glad that I could add some new as I wasn't able to some time now. But it looks like things are turning to better side now.

Maybe I shouldn't write it here, maybe it is not idea. On other hand it can't be worse, right. Well nobody is buying prints of my photographs. I am not much manager so maybe that is the problem. I much more enjoy making photographs than marketing them. In that I am probably not alone.
But I am just thinking what can be a problem. Price it can't be is so low that if I go few euros lower I do not make anything. Some friends say that maybe that is a problem, price is too low and you are unknown. I had higher prices just few days ago and it wouldn't work either. So the problem must be that I am unknown. And how to fix that? By marketing and promoting. I still have few ideas But as days goes I am less and less sure that anything like that would work. There must be different approach to it. Outside of a web and to use web only as option of easy access.
And how about you, who reads these lines, which I am writing here at evening room? Are you friend of mine and that is why your read this or because you like my photographs or, which is I guess more likely, you are just passing by and never will be back again. I would be curious to read from you, let me know.

Another shot from Portugal, Argarve. This is from small city in quite distance from south beach of Portugal. About 100km from there on Spanish border.

After good night of sleep I do not see things that dark as yesterday evening. Sometimes is really difficult to hold on, you know. I try my best. I will implement few more things with web to try attract more people. One will be putting some prints on eBay with low starting price to see how high they go. Use that as pointer to my web site and also kind of measure for price indication.
Before that I need to make some adverts mail on photo and art groups. I am planning also introduced even cheaper option, probably when Christmass offers expire at the end of this month. Those cheaper will be smaller 15x20cm prints. and the bigger one will go back to their original prices. So if you like to have bigger prints you still have 22 days.

Today is really much better day. Things looking more positive than just few hours ago. I thank you all who are visiting my pages for your interest. It is a nice to see that my images are appreciate and that visitors of my web site are staying longer.
This giving me extra energy to continue, to go further and create another images which will bright day of somebody else.

Now on other note:
I am following situation in France for few days now. I having feeling that it is become really critical and will not stay only in France. According news France declared today a 12-day state of emergency. It doesn't look good. I hope my friends there are ok and I also hope that this all will lead to something good and positive and will not end by any declaration of power from any of the sides.

Having walk on a beach at Belgium coast I was observing those kiters. Some of them doing quite crazy things.

It is quite funny. I have sent few mails to newsgroups around Europe mostly. This message was pointing to the fact that I have this winter sale. I start by Dutch and Italian groups around lunch time. And in those last 12 hours I have got traffic like I do normally in five days. Another interesting thing is that people are staying longer so it is not only jump and go but in average they go through about 20-30 pages and stay for about 3 minutes. It doesn't seems to be long but average time for session I had so far was something over one minute.
I will try soon some other approaches. Putting some prints on eBay as I announced and adding some more food for search spiders ;-)

Please, excuse my site down time. It was huge and it just went on-line few minutes ago after heavy power down around 11 hours ago, which has result in hard disk corruption. This was information from company where I have my web site hosted. It is unfortunate that this has happen just now when I have my Christmas shopping on-line. I hope people will come back. Unfortunately this kind of even do not increase a trust and do not add on good representation.
Now all seems to be back and I hope this will not happen again.

After todays power down, traffic resumed after lunch time. And it is huge. It is nice to observe how visitors are staying and watching picture after picture.

I was spending evening with figuring how to make nice mat over images using photoshop or my trusted Picture Window Pro. I like to use it for eBay and possibly in my Web Shop as well. Would be nice to shop potential customer how will a photograph look at the wall when in passe-partout. This process seems to be not that easy as I expected and after three hours of tryouts and mostly failures I decided that do this manually will be not possible. So I am on my way to rediscover power of ImageMagic, I hope it will solve this for me.

And a side note. My web space provider made my nice offer for those 11 hours of down time today. I really like these people. If you ever will need very flexible and helpful team for you web site hosting, do not overlook www.yegon.sk

Today was very busy day. I did a lot of things, but unfortunately not many related to photography. As a one nice thing I would mentioned nice email notifier using jabber protocol. So from now on when I will get email which is not spam I will get message from my jabber mailer telling me that I have mail. I do not have to let my mail program running and checking in intervals and I also do not need to have nay other special software for checking my mailbox. I just leave my jabber client on as I do now and I will get messages from my jabber mailman.

Kind of funny discussion is evolving at nl.foto newsgroup. All and all is useless, but is interesting to observe how people behave.

While browsing through old books and cleaning a bit, I have found my old book containing receipts for developer, fixers and another chemicals stuff you need for analog photography. It is very old small book published 1956. I remember I have bought it when I was around 14 in second hand book store. As I browse through it I have found one receipt I was using that time. It is for developer called Windisch Pyrocatechin. I have look on Internet and have found this page where they describe modified version of this developer. What I remember is that this developer has extremely good compensating effect. I use it with films of 50-100ASA about 25 years ago. It is a long time isn't it?

It is a sometimes scary how time is flying. You turn and 25 years is gone. But there is still some time ahead. So let's use it as best we can.

So after almost all day of researching checking and preparing I have put my first two prints on eBay auction. You have now chance to get two of my best prints for a very little money. I have put start price to 9.99US$. Which is far bellow my production price only for materials not counting work and time. I take this as a experiment to see if I can at all sell on eBay and also what price are people accepting. Now time is ticking there is less than seven days until the end of this experiment. So please here are the links:

• Charle's cat
• Cross

Did you ever look, through postbox on the door, if anybody is home?

More and more in a last few weeks I am involved in marketing my own photographs than making new ones. It is kind of strange for me, as I am not really any good in this kind of work. Much more I enjoy making new images and therefore I am planning to focus mainly on new work for the next few days.

As a result of my post to Usenet newsgroups and putting some adds on few web sites traffic increase on my site last week enormously. It is still keeping higher than before and that is a good sign. Unfortunately this didn't find any reflection in sales. One of the print on eBay has one bid, hopefully also somebody else will bid on it. There where also some discussion in those groups and some boards, but mostly they tent to be heavy one side views with more attack approach than serious comments or discussions. What a typical way for the Usenet.
Main reason for all this marketing is not really get any rich, but to increase exposure and also to get possibly some little money back to support buying on new film and chemicals to be able to go forward. As I wrote some weeks ago I have few ideas about new style of images I like to do, but currently I have two major blocks in that way. One is a time. I have currently only evenings. And a second is money. First problem will be possible solved by friend. I will borrow some lights from him and try to make some arrange photos in the house with help of those lights. Second, money problem it is more difficult to solve. you can help me with purchasing one of my prints.

After knowing about LensWork magazine for a few years now I have subscribed to it for next year using nice holiday special price. It is always a problem to subscribe to a magazine from USA. The price skyrockets, when you want to deliver it to Europe. Thanks to this special action it was easier.

I had already earlier feeling, that I like this magazine even they sometimes publish portfolios of flowers and nature which is totally uninteresting to me. What I really like on this magazine is print quality and also aesthetic which directly springs out of it. The interviews are mostly interesting and opinions of an editor are the one I can agree with.
One can really see how good exposed and quality worked on photography should look, even if the subject is not particularly interesting to the observer. And what a pleasure to hold the magazine in your hands and read through it in winter evening.

I have develop two rolls of expired Kodak TMY and two rolls of Fuji Neopan 1600. First duo in my standard Paterson Aculux 2 and the second one in Ilford Ilfotec DD-X. Both as one shot. Kodak TMY didn't surprise me looks quite flat as it always did to me when I was using it with Kodak XTOL 1:1. The Fuji Neopan 1600 looks good on places where it was exposed with enough light. I have some shots which were shot in very low light conditions and those are underexposed. But this is not for reason of wrong development but for reason of not correct light measurement. You know in situations where is very little light but one or two sources of strong light. Situations which is very common on night streets. In such a situations one need to measure mostly with average and than overexposed by two stops or measure by spot meter from the darkest part one like to have details and than underexpose by two stops.
I need to remember that and try some more shots in these kind of situations, Negatives are now drying and I hope I will have enough time tomorrow to scan them and possibly show some progress and maybe even update my Experiments page.

Oh, I forgot to mention to you. It is less than 30 hours for you to buy my two nice prints. They are on eBay still for less than 8euro! Check it out, satisfaction guaranteed:

• Charle's cat
• Cross

Less than 24 hours until the end of my first eBay auctions both prints are selling. Still for minimal price, but they both selling. That is nice. Maybe you like to try your luck. Here are the links again. This time last time tomorrow I will know who is buying. So last chance now, Charle's cat and Cross.

So my two prints Charle's cat and Cross on eBay have last nine hours. I was wondering why my prints are not showing in categories where I place them when I list ending soonest. I still have to learn more about eBay, I guess. Maybe you can explain it to me?

My first sale of prints on eBay is over. Both prints were sold for minimal price of 9.99US$. It is extremely low, somehow I was hoping that maybe price will rise but I see that there is not real interest for the prints from unknown artist. Maybe I will take a risk and I will offer one more print, this time on German eBay, but price will be higher. But I am not sure yet.

After kind of disappointment with my eBay experience I though I will give a little break to myself. After Saturday which I spend mostly with physical work in a garden and printing two prints I sold, I start today fresh. I scanned in high resolution Fuji Neopan 1600 which I exposed last week at my work. I must say that Ilford DD-X in combination with Neopan 1600 giving very low grain, but also low contrast. This is quite surprising but yes it is like that. Interesting thing is that I have got much better results when I measure once dark parts and set for whole roll same settings (it was 1/60 and f 4.0) that when I used matrix or average meter. The reason would be that in low light conditions light is very contrast and spots of strong light can totally confused even Nikon Matrix meter.
So back to the point. I have made quite a few prints, and because they were rather boring I have start playing with mask, darkening and blurring. As the prints goes I was getting stranger and quite more interesting results. I was planning to published them, but not sure if I still have energy. Let see...

So I did it, I have add new experiment. I call it Blurry tryout. Take a look quite a few pictures there, namely nine. I am going to bring them tomorrow at work and place them on the wall. It will be interesting to watch how people will react on them. It was nice to play with something else again and create from really boring shot something interesting.

So it was a for a few days when I didn't write anything here. The main reason is that I have very busy time at work these days and when I came home and I have some time for myself I was busy with making those two prints I sold on eBay. Mainly I was busy with putting them into pass-partout and packing them. Today is shipping day. I also made four small prints for a friends who likes my blurry experiment. I must say it was quite fun when I hang them Monday at work. A lot of people where coming to take a look and there was a lot of fun. I like that. One could see how nice and funny environment it creates. After a long time I had some satisfaction.

Please note, last SEVEN days for special prices and winter shopping. Look at my web shop and made somebody happy with nice print!
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I was just talking with Dave today about orders and generally about selling photographs on Internet. He was saying that something must happened as he is getting so many orders in last few days. I was envy him. But something happen here as well, just few hours ago I have got order, and right a way for two prints. Very nice!

It is very nice I have got another offer, seems like last few days of my winter shopping offer is bringing some results. So I have now two orders to work on. Not much time for anything else than, but maybe I will put some new pictures over weekend.
We are getting colder weather now and it even start snowing one hour ago. Seems like winter is really coming.

Few days ago, inspired by momentary feelings I bid on Yashica Electro GSN on eBay and won. I was thinking to have silent small camera which I can drop and will not miss. And as second though, nice camera for my daughter. So I have received camera Friday and try it yesterday. Today I already scanned negatives from it. Camera works, but one can't expect from it quality of Nikon lenses. Whatever people can say. Yes it is ok, but not as sharp as I am getting from my Nikon F100. But of course it is not fair to compare. And I am not doing that. It is silent, very silent, you here only silent click. The shutter release feel little like toy. It has long way down until shutter is released. In a middle way it turns on light meter and you can hear some kind of electrical switching in the body. You hear it only because your nose is on camera, but nobody else is able to. I am glad it works, I payed something around 30 euro for it including delivery. It will be nice camera for my daughter I think.

As I have finished last two orders and they are ready to send, first thing this morning, I am wondering if any more orders will come in LAST 3 DAYS of my winter shopping action. I must say it would be nice, it would prove something about prices I guess :-) So last less than 72 hours and than we go on as normal.

I think I am overdoing a little writing all the time about this, but yes, this will be last one. There is less than 24 hours until winter sale ends in my photography store. So if you like any of my prints there is a last chance today. And yes we play here on local time so GMT+1 :-)