Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

After traveling past few days in South of Czech we are back in Prague enjoying nice late night with our friend Rudo.
We had a nice time driving slowly through small towns and villanges in South part of Czech Republic. Nice landscapes and interesting places. This is for us very relaxing time. I have made few rolls of nice shots, at least I hope. It all will be clear after we will return. Now we have two days in Prague for us.

We are heading back home, after few days of holiday we are comming back. I will be answering all emails about availability of mz olympus equipment Sunday, when I go through all emails I have got in mean while.

I am carrying home about ten rolls of material and hopefully will be able to develop them in first week. I have made some nice shots in South of Czechia and also some other kind of shots from different places in Czech and Slovak Republic.

After we came back from holiday I am going through all emails. One think is sure now Olympus Zuiko 85 and 50mm lenses are sold out. There few more mails about other items. I am going to answer them and we will see which item is going to be sold next. If you have interest of any of remaining Olympus items please let me know soon.

I went through all emails I have got in past days of my travel. I have send answers to all of you who contacted me about particular piece of Olympus gear. I hope I didn't miss any email (it was quite a bunch).
Please, If I did miss you so you didn't receive email from me today (dated Sunday the 13rd of August) write me once more.

These first days after our two weeks long traveling in Czech and Slovak republic are quite hectic. Return to daily job and kids to school makes some things very hard. Routines is killing me, I must say.
I need to find again my rhythm. As I wrote earlier I have some rolls exposed on my trip. It is not much, but I know there are few nice images. Plan was to print them before I visit Caroline again to add some more images into the series for "Remembering Childhood" planned exposition at autumn this year.

I am also going in few weeks shoot photos for a book of my friend. I will by traveling back to Prague for few days. I bought a lot of film about five 100ft (30.5m) bulk rolls. I need to roll them as well and test new film. This new film for me is not new at all, but it was over twenty years I have used it. It is Fomapan 400. I like to test it in my favorite developers and try to push it to 800 or 1600 ASA.
Yesterday I also finally received pack of A3 sized Epson Archival Matte paper. I will send another set of photographs to some interesting photo competition. Oh, I didn't tell you, it seems that one pf my photographs was accepted on FOTOFORUM in Ruzomberok, Slovakia. That is a first FIAP photo competition I have send my photos to.
So those are first news in first week after return.

I wish I can tell you more or show you some of new pictures, but unfortunately it is not possible. We have still some mess in house. I hope it all will be cleaned in two three days and than I can safely start rolling new films and developing. We still have no completely finished our house rebuild. We are expecting visitor Wednesday and so it is the day deadline for us.
This weekend I have refilled cartridges on my printer and will print some pictures for new competition and for sending to B&W magazine in UK as Daniel did. ;-)

The days which passed where all very gray and I had feeling that must be autumn. You know work began after holiday, kids are in school. All was just back in the usual ritual which in combination with gray weather was quite a depressive for me.
Today, after whole night of rain, we woke up into beautiful sunny morning. It is incredible how it can help. Than I realize it is still August and summer is still here, even thermometer says 14C.

After longer diet I have developed six rolls f Fomapan 200 exposed at 100 ASA in Fotospeed FD10 1:9 for 9minutes. They are all drying now and I am glad I have broke this summer no development time. Soon there will be new shots on web. Just looking at negatives I am pretty sure about it.

From time to time tracking other RSS feeds bring very interesting informations view and so. You know, it is like some years ago reading newspapers. Sometimes you get inspired or you find out something what inspires you. This time A Botzilla Journal by Kevin Bjorke inspires me to look at the site of European (Italian) black and white photo magazine PRIVATE I like that so much that I bought four back issue and I am considering to subscribe. I probably will wait with it until I will see those three issues I have ordered. I am very glad that also in Europe we have magazine like this.

I have updated my adds for the rest of the Olympus gear on sale. Now with prices. Olympus body OM-2n €100.00, Olympus body OM-2sp €140.00, Zuiko 28/2.8 €60.00. In case of buying multiple pieces there is a discount of 20% from sum of the prices. In case of your interest contact me.

As you can see the star and right corner of each page is working again. It is indicates my jabber status, so those who knows my jabber id can chat me. It was down for a while, but I have found one resource which seems to be working and hopefully will work longer than original edgar which is down for a few month now.
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I am planning to do next developing today and than afterwards start scanning. I need to prepare few new images for my meeting in middle of the September with Caroline and Hape. I like to develop first majority of the negatives and star scanning than so I can focus on each stage separately.
In my last batch of developing I made error. Somehow I looked up wrong time, I was supposed to use eight minutes, but instead I have developed Foma 200@100 in FD10 1:9 for nine minutes. Seems to not big deal, but I will know better after I scan the negatives.

Last night I have developed next six rolls of Fomapan 200. I was very tired as I didn't sleep long enough night before. I need really more sleep, need to organize my time the way I can rest enough. At the end of the day I am so tense.
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Now when I have all those dozen rolls developed I will start with scanning, it will be quite a job. I must tell you that lately I am looking on digital cameras again. But each time I develop negative I am so happy just to look at it, that I am not sure if this will be also the case shooting with digital. On other hand the freedom to shoot 30 and more shot from one scene is great thing. But the tool is really not that important, I like to work with film, because it gives me great advantage to make picture in very difficult light and like that. The important thing is to use my brain and imagination to create images which will be showcase of my view on things. The way I express it. That is important.

For a quite long time I was taking so called street or documentary photography until beginning of this year when by my Night Mood experiment, went a bit of different direction. Direction when I am more in control what is going and how it is going to be photographed. I like that very much and even I made some shots to fill me Remembering of Childhood project, I still like to go to that more abstract and personal route.

All my Olympus gear is sold out now. I can buy my long awaited Nikkor 85/1.8 AF-D lens!