Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

I went to Amsterdam today to visit my old friends from the time when we all worked for the same company. It was extremely nice hot day and a lot of people where sitting on cafes and restaurants. The city was recovering from yesterday Queen's day and you can see tired faces serving you beer.
We had a nice slow time in that heat drinking beer after beer and eating some snacks. Pity I had to go home so early.
From tomorrow on I am on short trip in Belgium so I wouldn't be able to add any pictures for this time. It is a pity as I was planning to add two which I worked on last few days. But they are not finished yet.

Today we have returned from short holiday trip to Belgium coast. We had mixed weather, mostly sunny but cold and rather windy. In any case we enjoyed it very much. I have shoot about six rolls of Fuji Across and Maco 100 UP.
I did a lot of shots on beach. Some fisherman and later, Thursday few people doing kite surfing.

You know I am still not fully satisfied with the way I am developing Fuji Across. Maybe I shouldn't be that persistent and use my favorite Kodak 125PX. On other hand I can get Across much cheaper. So I have order Paterson FX-39 and yes another experiment it is time to do some test again :-)

You remember that you play whole day in sand and than at the end of the they when you mom call you for dinner you need to clean all the sand out of you socks and between you fingers. Do you still remember that? How old are you? 37? Well, I do remember and that is why I like this photo. Also the soft shadows from a tree reminds me long summer evenings.

I have made very few photos of my friend dalibor. I kind of like this one done few month ago. He has his typical smile.

In a summer when we visiting out parents and families we often go for milk to local farmer. We get fresh milk which taste rather different than milk from shop. We all like it very much and every afternoon ritual of walking for a milk is hared by all of us.

Monday I have ordered Paterson FX-39 developer. And yes, today is it here. I have to mentioned it again. If you in Europe and like to order some chemicals use Speed Graphic you will get it for good price very fast. Maybe they are as as to US I have no idea, they deliver worldwide.
I bought yesterday also Amaloco AM74, developer which I have tried and use for some time about four years ago with Kodak TMX.
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So I am starting my preparation for attack to Fuji Across 100. I like to setup simple test, exposing two situations, high and low contrast. For each doing multiple exposure from -2EV until +2EV exposure compensation in half stops. Developing in Aculux 2, FX-39 and AM74. This will take some time, but I hope I can find a sweet point of Across if there is any with these developers.
And yes it is time to update experiments page.

I almost overlooked this photo. I noticed it few days ago, when I was doing a little cleaning in my photo database and was adding descriptions and marking interesting photos. As you can see this is old wind mill, typical thing from The Netherlands. What is interesting on this shot is that it was done with Fuji Neopan 400 exposed at 1600 ASA. And than developed in two bath compensating developer Tetenal Emofin. You can't really see details from small web picture but on print everything is nice sharp with a lot of details and for 1600 incredible small grain.

One day after the Christmas I bought two disposable cameras for my daughter and son. One early morning we went to nicely frozen country side and toke some pictures. I did few as well. Than we let them developed in one hours service and we had a lot of fun with looking at results afterwords. I did shoot only very few and I developed them home. This one is interesting as it is Fuji Neopan 400 exposed at 1600ASA and developed in two bath compensating developer Tetenal Emofin. Nice tonal scale and contrast with nice minimal grain for 1600 ASA.

I have borrowed tripod and was ready to make my Fuji Across test today. I wasn't going to make any zone system test of zone 1 or any other highly sophisticated tests. I only wanted to see how this films behave in different developers. I wanted to find way to not the blow highlights and keep shadows details. But this on shots I am normally doing in full sun or against sun. So more or less normal shooting situation. I also wasn't ready to use 4 rolls and liters of developers. I just wanted to make it simple enough. And make some kind of starting point which can give me feeling how Across behave in different developers. I know I wouldn't cover all possible situations, but that was fine for me.

There was a beautiful sun whole morning but when I went to make my exposure (half hour ago) clouds arrived and make it very difficult to keep same light condition. So I am in the middle of one series and can't go further. Hopefully weather will change and I can continue.
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And yes, Sun has come out of clouds for next half hour and I made rest of my test shots. I did two rolls, each three times the same series of 9 shots for three different developers. I made first scene on direct sun with details in white and shadows and second scene from inside house towards strong sun light with black shadows bellow the window. I made shots from -2EV up to +2EV of suggested values. I am planning to develop it Paterson FX-39, FX-44 (Aculux 2) and Amaloco AM74.
I have also plans (maybe for tonight) to rework a little experiment page. The idea is keep all old experiments there and only add new. Something like article page.

Today morning I woke up little later. Nice advantage of Saturday. When I look outside i realize that the Sun is beaming with full power and maybe I can do test the way I wanted yesterday. So I went out setup tripod and even found great scene with sky some clouds shadows in tree and road and some brick walls. On this simple scene behind our house was everything from 1/90sec up to 1/3000 sec at f9.5 according spot meter (which I have found not very precise) on my Nikon F80. I did my set of shots.
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Now at the evening I have all test rolls hanging and drying including some normal Across rolls I develop together with those test rolls. So I did in each tank one normal roll and two stripes of 9 shots of two different scenes. One from yesterday, diffused light and one from today, hard contrast light with sky. I can't really see huge difference between FX-39 and AM74 with direct inspection of negatives. Maybe FX-39 developed negatives are little bit darker. Well let wait until it dry and tomorrow I will do scans.

As you may noticed I was doing some changes on web site yesterday. As I decide that could be interesting to change experiments page the way that old experiments are also accessible. Now only the last one there is accessible but soon one older and the new one with my test of Fuji Across 100 will be there. Yesterday I was quite busy with all those changes, which needs to much more work that I thought at the beginning.

I have add old experiment with developing Fuji Neopan 1600 exposed at 800ASA in Paterson Aculux 2. So now I have two items in Experiments page and I can add some new shots and, yes you guess it right also scans from last test of Fuji Across in FX-39 and AM74. Well I am happy we have few extra days this time in May. So check new experiments page out and let me know if it is better than old last roll page.
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Few new prints I have done this afternoon and again some small adjustment on web shop. You can't see it yet but it is almost ready for some decent beta testing.

Exposure -2EV acording the camera meter. On the croped part you can see a lot of details on a shell in white parts and also on white border of the pot. Dark part of the pot shadow becomes almost totaly black and constins no additional informations. Metering shows 92.9% cover from from white to black. Still beter than any of overxposed exposures.

Exposure -1EV acording the camera meter. On the croped part you can see full details on a shell in white parts and also details on white border of the pot. Dark part of the pot shadow keeps all information even is a little darker than exposure without modification. Metering shows 93.7% cover from white to black. This was the best exposure. Little undersposure helps probably as the lighting was dull and most of the subject was darker than 18%grey. Still correct exposure has edge in covered range from white to black, even this shot has conatins the most unique colors. But differences to not modified exposure are marginal.

Exposure +2EV acording the camera meter. On the croped part you can see almost no details on a shell in white parts and white border of the pot is totaly burned with no details. Dark part of the pot shadow becomes light. Metering shows 85.1% cover from from white to black. Counting number of colors also shows that this image contains the lowest amount of informations.

Exposure +1EV acording the camera meter. On the croped part you can see less details on a shell in white parts and also details on white border of the pot are disaperaing. Dark part of the pot shadow becomes lighter and showing all details in shadow. Metering shows 92.6% cover from from white to black.

According to camera meter this was exposed without modification. On the croped part you can see details on a shell in white parts and very little details in dark part in shadow of the pot. Metering shows 95.3% cover from from white to black. From the point of view details and light informartion this was the second or maybe the best exposure.

Every year around end of May we driving 200km to first bigger French town called Lille. Each time among other things we do two, we go for nice lunch in good restaurant and we visit one building holding small, inner square. There we always find people selling old books, prints and other antique printing matters. People are also playing chess and discussing there. It is nice refreshing quiet place while just behind walls of this building is full traffic noise.

There was once a picnic, with a quite a lot people. I am not much of the type of eating all the time and talking a sitting, especially when I have a camera with me and bunch of film rolls. So I went to play with kids in forest behind a picnic place. It was wild and great, I can tell you the feeling when you sure that they forgot about camera and you can shoot as much as you want and nobody pay attention is great. I made about seven rolls in that picnic.

While browsing some photo site yesterday afternoon I have found that quite close to me Epson Fotofestival started. What is also interesting is that they have different activities through the days there open. One of them is portfolio day. I was planning to join one in Italy organized by TPW, but I know it in very short noticed and didn't manage to prepare properly. Also money matter has its role there. This time is close and cheaper and much bigger choice of portfolio consultants. Maybe I will give it a try this time. Let's see.

On a fish market in small village of south of Portugal. Algarve. We woke up early to have possibility to visit fish market early morning and see fisher mans coming to harbor. These two young mans where buying some fish and couldn't found the money. I really like situation on this picture and smile on the face of seller.

I have add new article about my favorite film/developer combination. It is not finished yet but it already contains some useful information. I decide to put my latest findings and proved procedures into one file. This way I do not have to answer same question all the time and I have also one place where to go, if I need to remind myself of something.

As I was writing it, I went through my images for lower sensitivity films and I couldn't resist and think about Fuji Across again. I love Kodak 125PX when developed in Aculux 2, it is just very expensive to get here. I would love to make Aculux my 100ASA film of choice, but somehow I cant' get that right image out of it.
You know, I am using these two cameras. Olympus OM-2n less and less and lately mostly Nikon F80. I noticed, already long time ago, that OM-2n is overexposing sometimes more than one stop when comparing with matrix metering of Nikon F80. So I looked how did I develop Kodak 125PX in Aculux when shot in OM-2n and how when F80 was used. Of course I develop both the same way, but I realize that most of images I really like was done by OM-2n. I said hey! maybe I am actually overexposing this film and developing shorten that I should. And yes I am getting feeling, that this is really the case. So maybe if I try to do the same trick with Fuji Across, maybe, I'll get better images and not burned highlights.

I have select 14 prints for portfolio days I mentioned earlier. So I start printing them and run out of paper. Terrible, it is Friday and I will not be able to get new paper earlier than Wednesday. I have found set of papers I ordered some time ago and never try. I know it is quite risky to use unknown paper for such a thing, on other hand I have a chance to test that paper now properly on multiple images and if it turns wrong I can still use new paper which arrive Wednesday or use cheaper, but good paper I still have.
Tell me why these things are always happening at the moment you wouldn't expect then?

I have successfully prepared set of 13 photographs for portfolio days for next Sunday. I use paper name Merlin which I have bought some time ago instead of usual Hahnemuhle PhotoRag. It is not bad actually is little brighter and little colder than PhotoRag. On other hand I have feel that D max is not as good as on PhotoRag.
What I also did today was I did one roll of Fuji Across and exposed it in my Nikon F80 at 50ASA. I was hoping I will develop it today, but I didn't managed. It seems I will be not lucky for few next days as we are starting tomorrow rebuilding our bathroom. It supposed to take two weeks. For this time no development.
Still I will be busy. I have a lot of rolls from which I didn't print a single frame.

I have received confirmation for my portfolio presentation on Sunday. I am looking forward to it. It is my first official portfolio presentation and it will be with five important people from photography business. With each there is separate 20 minutes meeting.
As we have heavy progress with rebuilding in our house I am not able to develop any new films and frankly I am bit afraid to open scanner and printer from plastic covers as well. I hope dust will not get there. Instead I am focusing on finishing last changes on web shop.

I have made simple modification in configuration of my web pages. From now on I redirect all request to http://piskoftak.com/ into http://www.piskoftak.com/ I realize that most of the people who types web into browser url window are using www. Also when one like to make business card or just simple signature at the end of e-mail is easier to use www.piskoftak.com than http://piskoftak.com/. For people is more understandable that it is web page when they see www. I hope it will not bring any problems.
I was for long time defending position of not using www, but for business is better and also from DNS point of view is correct to use host part of name and not only domain name. So from now on all request which do not use www are automatically redirected to www.piskoftak.com address.

I suddenly notice a lot of people coming from dir.yahoo.com. And yes this site is now featured in Yahoo directory!

Siting in the wet plastic and breathing freezing air, sliding down the hill with speed in the hair. Those feelings I loved when I was young. You had frozen fingers on hands and feet, but feel such a heat in your chest. So much fun and such a beautiful time.

Now you can see if I am on line by taking look at right top side of my pages. There you can see small bulb indicating my status on jabber IM. I hope this will not turn against me and I will be not flood with huge amounts of chat :-) Anyway let see how it will work. I just find it nice little thing.

It was hidden on a back garden of one church in south of Portugal, Algarve. My wife found it. I really do not know what is a story behind it and why it is build from human bones, but it look very scary. There are graves in under the floor in front of it.

Tomorrow will be my big day, I am going to show my 13 prints to the five important people in photography business in the Netherlands. All this is part of photo festival in Naarden, NL. I am glad that I have this opportunity. I was earlier, maybe you remember looking at possibility to have same kind of portfolio review in Italy. That time it was organized by TPW. I had less that 10 days that time and I need to fly and have accommodation. This time is much easier for me, only one hour driver by car.
Maybe you ask what do I expect, well to tell you the truth, I hope I will know more people in photo area in this country (I miss that a lot) I hope I will hear some good suggestions and interesting views on my work. Well I shall see tomorrow!

I am back from by portfolio reviews. I spoke with five people and have few comments and quite strong suggestions for the future. I am very tired now to go into details here, and I need to think about it little more. I will write tomorrow little more about it and also my view. Good night now.

So, are you also one of those who are waiting for me finally writing about my portfolio reviews? I guess yes, because I have got about dozen e-mails in last two days asking how was it :-)

I am not going to write about individual talks and comparing person to person. I will write about what I have got there in whole. One need to know that set of people I choose was mainly oriented to newspaper and reportage and less on documentary. I was talking to representatives of dutch edition of National Geographic, two dutch daily newspapers, biggest dutch photo agency and owner of popular photo website covering most of the photo activities in the Netherlands.

When I went there I actually wasn't sure what to expect, I wasn't completely sure what I want as well. I was hoping than reviewers will tell me something (what, I had no idea) which will show me where to go and what to do. And this was probably the problem.
I like photographing as I do now but for very long time I have feeling that it doesn't lead anywhere. That I need to make more with my photographs than only catch interesting situations or nice light. I wasn't and still I am not fully sure what it was what I am missing. Why that kind of uncertainty and lack of satisfaction? Something is missing!

All persons I spoke to had no negative comments to my photographs all of them where in one that technical quality and quality of composition is good or even very good. NG editor has comment about need of more distance to subject and color if I would ever consider publishing there. All other reviewers were equal in comment that I need to have more concrete subject, story in my work.
I was presenting 12 (at the end) prints from my series about childhood comment was following:
it is good for book or for long term work but to wide and too general for newspaper work. For that we need a story about concrete people or subject which is tide to reality and best to the current news of interest"

And than was it when I realize that this is what I am missing I am missing interests on current hit news I am not reporter I am not the one who is going to war zone and take pictures of ruined people and places. But on other hand I also realize that I really like to create stories about something more common and not so visible, about situations which are not in daily news but are part of live of many people. But question is why I am not doing it?
I than realized that photography is not only about photo technique and ability to catch the light. It is also about a message which photographs will bring to other people. And that is why when one see picture, one can easily said which picture is good and which one is not. Both are perfect technically and esthetically but one tell you something while the other is forgotten in few seconds.

For me is now only one question? what stopping me from making me those kind of picture, pictue which show small stories.