Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

It was years and years ago when I entered the school for the very first time. From that day I had couple of days like that. Day when I entered Gymnasium, the day when I failed on repair test, my graduation day. I remember that all these days sun was shining. It is strange but I really have no recollection of rainy weather on those days.
Those days where full of expectations and feel that new interesting thing are going to happen and that all the sunny days are in front of me.
Now I am years further and didn't have such a day for some time. I miss it, there seems to be nothing in future to have promise of such a day. No fixed dates no fixed plans and no fixed expectations of new sunny days to come. I am happy that I had them and that I enjoyed the and remember them until today.

Some, especially young people they certainly have such a days in front of them, but they tend to ignore them. They do not see them. I hope they will not look for them when they are forty. It may be too late, Tomas...

as you may noticed I have played today a little with colors on this web, not sure if they are better than before, but I like the change.
What I certainly like is the refresh I did at my portfolio web site. If you have a moment take a look there and let me know.

Be on top, close to the light and sky

I just returned from very nice photo session I had with Viera. We went into the fields and while incredible nice sunset light beams through her think white dress I made, I hope, quite a few nice photos.
I am just copying them to computer and soon I can browse and make first selection. I am really happy that this has happen. We planned it for today morning, but rain and clouds didn't allow it.

Something very very unexpected happened yesterday after I returned from the photo session. Something I am actually quite happy (now:-) that it happened.

I use Hyperdrive SPACE for copying images from my CF card at the time of shooting. I bough this device this summer and place in it my older 2.5" HDD. I setup this device for the most secure and safe copying. Each image is copied and than re-read and checked again, before it is removed from CF card.
I came home yesterday and connected my Hyperdrive to PC using USB and start copying images. And, exactly what you expect happen. During copying it stop on certain file. HDD made quirky sound and USB disconnect the drive. So from around 400 images I have got hardly 220. Nothing helped. Before I start to thing about removing HDD (I still want to do it) I was thinking. I used each of my CF cards only once and than I just removed files (or that quick format what Hyperdrive does). So the images must be on cards as well. And because I bought one of the most expensive cards from SanDisk I have got also their recover software. So let's use it. Must be no problem it is FAT32 and any good un-delete must be able to recover files from it. Well SanDisk soft completely failed. And so other about ten I have tried. I was desperate. Today I have found a software FlashUnDelete from Russian guy named Timofei Goryunov. I tried demo and certainly I saw all my lost images, but I couldn't restored them. I have payed something over 22 euro and now I have all my images back!
I will check my 2.5" HDD in Hyperdrive and I will probably buy some new and better HDD for it. Now I am uncertain, how all this is possible? Why? Well I know when you shoot film, you always can screw up development so you can screw image storage. Nothing is bullet proof!

Even it is now seen here on my blog I am working very hard this week to get all the images out. I decided that I better make all my process right as much as possible first before I am flooded (which already partially happen) with new images. I am working on script for IMatch to make all this working smoothly. Particularly script for retrieving images from my image tank and sending it to my local drive, rename to proper name extract the embedded jpg, copy EXIF data.
Same time I have made plan for my background service, which is ensuring that images are copied to backup device (NAS on my local NET) and burned on DVD as well.

I will write about my ideas and aproach when it has already a bit shape and it is working, at least a bit. Now shortly to mentioned for those who has knowledge from Medical Imaging: It is based on Short and Long term storage principles of PACS. Including pre-fetching and auto deleting and auto archiving. I am rather enthusiast about it. Just pity I have not whole day time for it otherwise it would be running by now :-)

When I noticed yesterday increasing traffic on my web I wonder what has happen. I realize that most of it is coming from The Online Photographer's article where Dave Beckerman, as he writes, has his 15sec of fame.
My friend Jeff has written comment and in it he has mentioned my web site, and from there all those visitors.

I only wondering why nobody left comment on my site ;-)

I have just finished my new script for Imatch. I wanted to make something nice something like lightroom has for importing images with copy to backup, rename and auto assign to categories. I am still using older version of Imatch as some years ago I decided to not pay for new upgrade as the one I had was good enough and problems it has wasn't going to be fixed by new version anyway.
But back to the script. It is purely for importing digital RAW images. I needed it as the amount of images is increasing as the chaos with their handling. I wanted to keep more or less core of my current work flow which I am used and using for analog images.

This new script is reading image from card or from other disk/directory. It is reading from EXIF data date of exposure, shutter release number and model of the camera. These are used to rename the image in format [year-month-date-shutter_release_number]. Than embedded preview image from raw is extracted to jpg and rename with same name. raw file is copied to selected destination plus optional backup destination. jpeg preview image is re sized correctly rotated and lightly sharped. Than such a image is copied to the correct place where Imatch has images and it is imported in Imatch current DB. It is included in new category named import.[today's date] as well as camera model category.

That is all. I may in future describe more about the script with some screen captures if there is interest from IMatch community. This script is written in visual basic (scripting language of IMatch) so it is in for use also other people if they can miss Imatch category assignment at the end of import.
Few external tools are used: exiftool, dcraw, convert from imagemagick. Process is pretty fast.

If you like to know more or try it yourself leave a comment.

I am recently thinking about making one from two web sites I have. One where I almost daily publish my blog and images called www.piskoftak.com and the second one www.richard-vanek.eu marketed more towards my portfolio work as presentation of selected work.
I feel that having one site with better, perhaps flash based, presentation would be more effective as having two site. Tell me what do you think and which domain name, you think, I should keep.

Thanks for your opinion!

This technical stuff is probably not much of interest of many of you. But I have tested yesterday my RAW image import script for IMatch on over 800 images. All is working fine and through yesterday I improved performance as well. First it was for 400 images 30 minutes now it is bellow 5 minutes.
Yesterday I started to import all my Nikon D300 RAW images into this new scheme and all seems to be working fine. So very soon I will present here images from Viera's session.

As it seems school year started. I do see it not only at my kids ;-), but also looking at visitor log of my web sites. Courses and some regular photo lectures increased number of visitors to my site.

If you one of them I would really love to hear what do you think about my photos and what has catch your eye.

She is the mystery of my life, sitting here in front of me. Looking into my eyes.

As you may notice I have uploaded first image from new series. That indicates that I am also finished for now, with my import script and that is working all right.
This new series will also in time lead to joining of two of my sites. It probably will not happen in next days, but certainly this year ;-)
I have took around 400 images from this session and need to go through all and make selection. Kind of pre-run of that I did over the weekend, but I like to do it again and possibly add some other pictures I made earlier to create complete set.

I have just received replaced 16 port SATA RAID controller from Adaptec. I must say that after I have tried a lot of combination on different computer and two phone call to Adaptec support line all when perfectly smooth. I hope I will have time today to put card and disks in my future NAS storage and test if now all works as it should. If it will I am on good way to build my own multi terabyte RAID5 NAS device.

Flying above the ground, no fear, no worries....

I am so busy last few days (when I am not ;-) after two new images and thinking about restructuring my web sites and their contents I found time today to finally place my newly replace Adaptec 21610SA. And now the controller is building RAID5 from my four 0.5TB Green Western Digital drives. It will have 1.3TB capacity and I hope to add some more drive later. I only have to watch capacity of power supply and number of power connectors as well as number of bays where I can place new drives. I am looking forward to have this archive for my images. I hope soon I can make it even more reliable (write cache is off) by adding UPS. I am planning to use FreeNAS OS, but I may turn to some other system as well. Now only wait hew dozen hours :-) until it will be finished with building the array.

Something happen than

Today both of my web sites where 3 hours down. Until now I didn't receive any information about the reason from my provider. Maybe it is a time to change the provider. I had this in mind already for some time. As I am preparing the merge of both of them maybe I should think about changing place as well.
I am thinking about www.hostgo.com which is has not expensive prices and some features I like to have (ssh, stability). If you use them can you give me some feedback about their support?
If you have suggestion for some other nice provider I would appreciate if you leave a comment with some information and own experience. Thank you in advance!