Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

Today was the D-day for me. I have presented ten selected photos to my client and all where accepted and I have get paid. Good. It take a long time, but it is done now. I am glad. It was paid very low but I have got interesting experience.
I went today morning at 11:00 to pickup prints from lab. They are using now Hahnemuhle PhotoRag, same paper I am using for my archival prints, but of course they can go up to A0 size and roll long :-) When I saw prints I was surprised. Last time I did my prints done there they did it on some Fuji Paper similar to Epson Archival Matte. Todays prints were much better. Still not quality I can make home but quite nice. I have got this one time job through Hape Smeele and I also would like to buy one book from him so I decide to call him right away. He agreed that I can come and buy a book from him. Caroline Schroeder was also home and I showed them both the prints. We had a nice chat and than I went to Utrecht to deliver the prints to the customer.

As you already know everything turns out good. Now I can start with some new things and finishing old stuff, in any case I can go further. This took a little longer than I expected at beginning of January.

I have removed some pictures from CBO gallery and left only those which were chosen by the client. I will remove this gallery completely in a few days.

Today morning after breakfast I just start typing this page which wasn't click able for a long time. About page. So I have wrote something about myself and photography. As I started I wrote about a lot of things which happened before I was writing and writing and after while I realize, man this is not book here, common! So I cut a lot.

I must say that it is quite funny to remember all those nice stories I had chance to live through. Maybe one day I write more about some things.

Anyway take a look. I need to also update some texts in my article section. Few information is out dated as my friend told me today.

The CBO gallery is gone now. I am doing quite a changes on internal organization of this web site. I am moving images and making other way to access them. I can't keep them anymore like I did as my provider make some changes which makes it very inconvenient.

It is quite possible that you will see more and more disturbances, please excuse me for it. If you find something not working, please let me know as soon as possible.

On one of our latest visit to Slovakia, I was driving alone to other city over the mountains. After I was down on other side I passed through few nice villages. Once a while I have stopped and take a picture. This meadow was so nice that I have turn my car back and stopped. After walking up and down I have found position which was nicer and took this shot just at the moment birds where flying around.

Do you still remember that place for horses I am passing every morning on bike? You know I made this nice photo there. So, today morning I have notice that after winter they put new horse in it. It is kind of funny as after two big horses they put small pony there. It feel so lost in that big place. It is alone there and I feel sorry for him, he is walking morning when it is still cold up and down to warm up.

Few articles I am updating in these days. First one is about post processing after development of negative. I have added few more information about organization in Imatch which I am using and also put some more detail about scanning. Soon I will update article about printing.

Few days ago I have got a e-mail from TPW about they portfolio day. It looks very interesting. You have 30 minutes personal talk with persons from photography world, like photo editors, agency representative, photographers. You have to subscribe for minimal four of such a talks and there is a price of course for each such a talk. You present your portfolio and maybe you make somebody interested in your work.
Only pity is that I know it for one week and it is going to happen in two weeks. Quite short time and I am not sure if I am ready for such a thing. It would nevertheless very interesting experience. But I need to prepare my portfolio, which is not done now. I also maybe need to specialize little bit more and find out on what exactly. If I would have such a set of photographs ready than maybe would be worse of try to go there.
I am still thinking about it, but let's see what I do. At least I am thinking about to be more specific in my photo work. And I believe that is good. And also have a clear goal where to go is good as well. So even if I do not go there but I make myself ready for it, it will be very good.

When I see them playing, they do not look like kids anymore. So serious faces, questions in eyes. Just look at them, stoned faces, you can feel that hidden tension between players. What is going to happen next.

Films which I have developed yesterday are cut and in sleeves now. I have scanned one and I can tell this Fuji Across 100 somehow doesn't go right with my favorite developer Paterson Aculux 2. I even try some strange dilution 1:14 with funny short time 9 minutes and also try 12 minutes with the same dilution. Negatives have very very short dynamic range they look very flat. I do not know. Somehow it doesn't work for me. I will see more after I scan all four rolls.

I was also whole day busy with installing and setting up web shop. Yes I am finally doing some progress. I choose osComerce as a base for mys hop and after starting doubts I am glad now I went for it. Enormous support from people who use it and quite nice and simple design. I am now in progress of some tweaking and modification to my liking and needs. I am trying to connect it directly with my IMatch photo database. I think it will be not a big problem. There some small problems with displaying images, but I am on good way to solve them. I just need some time.

Whole weekend of quite intensive work on web shop. I must say that I am pretty far in modifying osComerce, the software I am using as base for my shop. For now it was mostly inside modification and not much of look and feel. I have added ability to add photos for sale directly from IMatch. Also made possible for osComerce to use already information I have about photos in my database on web server. As well I was successful in forcing osComerce to use my images stored in database rather than using or generating own images as files on file system. All and all seems to be working fine.

Maybe you bothered with all these technical informations, but I am quite enthusiastic. The reason is simple I was hesitating with putting my images for sale on-line for quite some time and main reason was this web shop stuff. I was really afraid that I am going to spent long time and having no results. Now it is more optimistic, in about three days I have almost all background tasks done. I must say that I feel very good about osComerce and I am glad that my friend Dirk recommended it to me.

I scanned all four rolls of Fuji Across and I must tell you that crazy time 9 minutes and dilution of 1:14 (which is totally out of Paterson suggestion) seems to work quite ok. Better than my other try of 12 minutes for the same dilution.
What I have also noticed that my F80 was metering sometimes very strangely, looks like this behavior happened some 2 rolls before batteries went off. It was quite funny F80 died almost instantly. I was afraid what is going on. I didn't notice anything special before and than camera was totally dead. When I put new batteries everything went ok.
So some of the frames are underexposed very very much.

I always hesitate to put photos of my family members on-line. Today I have found interesting note about that subject and I fully agree with him. Take a look, he also have very nice portraits.

Another interesting thing is information how to get Diafine developer cheap to Europe. mostly you have to order it from big shop from US where you pay almost 30$ postage, or from France where they ignore your English written comments and charge you card with 25euro postage. So here you can find information how you can order it from US for total 25$ including postage.

Some people are always puzzled with question where to take pictures. They go on holiday to foreign countries to see new things and make photos out of it. I like cheaper but little bit more difficult approach. Few weeks ago they made this greenhouse in close by farm. Every day when it is nice light I take camera and when passing by I made shot or four. Last week it was really nice and this is a result.

Friday, you know this is my extra day when I do not work but I am busy with photography most of the time. I do not know if you like the picture of green house. I shot it about two three weeks ago. Today morning was again beautifully morning so I though let's try again. I was counting that the Sun is now up a bit earlier so I went there about one hour sooner that last time. Well, what I have forget to count with was that not only time of sunrise changed but also place from where the Sun is rising. And that made whole difference. There was no nice reflection anymore and I left without single shot as all was too flat and not interesting. It is funny how such a stable things can change in few weeks.
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As you may know I have ordered Diafine from Huron Camera three days ago. I have got it today! This is incredible 3 days delivery from USA to The Netherlands. I had trouble to find source of Diafine in Europe. It was either very expensive or unreliable. Now I have found it. This is faster than from France! So maybe you also looking for Diafine and you are in Europe. Do not wait a second, from Huron Camera you can have it for $24.45 in three days.

From one of the trips we made in Portugal, Algarve. At the afternoon we arrived to city named Mertola. Small streets lead us from center to the castle. Under the castle we found a lot of small houses with curved stone streets were we met local people. We spent there by walking and taking pictures whole afternoon.

In a last few days I am quite busy with finishing of my web shop. It will go soon to beta test phase. It integrates nicely into design of my site. There are still few things to be done and few things to be add, but I hope in 2-3 weeks shop will be open.
I am still going through all negatives and printing what I have selected. It is still quite to go so you can expect few more pictures in following days.

Green house at the farm close to place where I live. This is second from more shots I have done the same morning.

Today morning I woke up quite early and felt completely refreshed. Sometimes I have it, even, like yesterday, I went in bad quite late. When I woke up and saw clear blue sky and Sun just rising I immediately get the idea to go again to my favorite green house and take some pictures while sun is low. I though maybe I can make something from other side, different angle.
So I managed to leave the house in 15 minutes with camera. I jump on bike and ride those 1000 meters. When I arrived things were not looking so great anymore. Sun was nicely low, but that low there was quite a lot of clouds which diffuse a light and than sun beams didn't create that kind of effects on green house I was hoping for. So here I am no single shot made, but I have longer day now!