Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

Today I have received final selection from picture I made for the client at the beginning of the year. The CBO gallery will be disappearing soon and I will be busy with preparing those ten selected shots for printing. I am glad that this order is going further. The reason is that I have got busy with other things quite a lot at the first two month of this year. New job and other things took most of my time. I am happy that I can go back to photography now again. So there is not a long time to wait for more new and more photographs.

Maybe you already now but we have a snowiest winter we ever had here in The Netherlands. I am living here for about five years now, but every winter if there was any snow it was gone in few hours. Last few days we have almost constant snowing and snows stays for days. Today morning I woke up and there is about 10cm of new snow. They said on news that on north of the Netherlands snow is up to 50cm and people are staying home as they can't reach work or schools. Funny when I compare this to normal condition back in country of my origin, Slovak Republic. When I was there few weeks ago they had over 150cm snow and temperature were about -10C to -25C and everybody was working and going to school as normal.

This weekend I was printing some images and also look around on the ones I have in my room on the wall. What I have notice now clearly and wasn't sure earlier is that my prints from 2001 are getting brown tint. I made them in 2001 using Fuji FDI machines. I print from scanned data adjust that time in PhotoShop and print them in local lab. Normally they say those kind of print should be without color change for about 50 years. Well now after hardly four years they all have brown tint. I have them on wall for about 3 years. There is now direct sun light on that wall. I am quite surprised. Other prints, which I have made in 2002 using my current technology of carbon pigment inks, are without any change.

I am almost done with prints for the client. Only two more to go and that little tweaking as they going to be printed large in lab. The weather turns in last few days fantastic. It is a spring here, sunny nice weather temperature above 10C it is like new life is coming to me.
With this weather change somehow more energy coming to me and I am again taking camera to my hands. I have order from Dirk two 100ft rolls for Neopan 1600 as for long time I have feeling to shoot low light with this film.
What more, my father is coming to visit us. He will be here today and this is first time somebody from my family is coming over after more that five years we live here. I am really looking forward to it.

My new Fuji 1600 100ft rolls arrived today and I hope I can soon load them in rolls. I really have to recommend you Dirk shop. He is very prompt and has stuff for nice prices. I ordered twice from him and have things delivered to Europe in few days for about 9 euro postage. Great service!

We went for a small trip yesterday and I took camera with me. I wasn't hoping to shoot too much, but i have end up with with three and half rolls. We went to sand dunes, which are near by. It was quite nice and I did a lot of tricky shots against sun, you those which I really like. I use Fuji Acros 100. I know that this film in combination with Paterson Aculux is blowing highlights, but anyway I use it. I will try to develop it with that knowledge and shorten the time and agitation.

Today is a first spring and very beautiful day. Great Sun and blue sky and it triggered me to take camera again on my way to work. I finished a half roll from yesterday and I use -0.5 underexposure to see what kind of effect it will have for blowing highlights on this Fuji Acros.
In near by farm they start putting up plastic greenhouses. They look really great in morning Sun. Lights beams through the plastic and it creates nice reflections. If I have some time tonight maybe I develop those films and will see.

When write in last days anything to this journal, it is always about speed of live and how I can't catch up. Things are really changing every day. My father who was visiting us for last two weeks left yesterday. And I have feeling that I didn't do everything I could and I wanted why he was here. I liked to talk with him more like a adult and not as his child. You know about things you can't ask when you were small boy. We had few times nice discussions but it always was to short or interrupted and I really didn't get as far as I liked to.
One is also realizing different things as one gets older. And sometime things comes without any particular reason in my mind.

Yesterday I brought test prints from lab. Yes I am still busy with final stage of order from the customer. Nice is that my lab is now printing also on Hahnemuhle Rag 308g paper. Same I am using up to A4 size. They use huge Epson A0 size printer. The prints which I am going to deliver coming Tuesday will be A3 size printed in this lab. Based on test print I am going to make small adjustments and bring them to lab tomorrow.

I have shoot some more Across Neopan while being on some trips with my father. Maybe I will have a little time to develop them this weekend and than some new shots finally will appear here.