I got few weeks ago call from Marek, and he told me quite shocking news. It has been a year since my last blog post. I felt really ashamed and I decided to change it and become again active on our blog.
I would like to start with short explanation, why I was away for such a long time. Let me go back to 2015, which was a very eventful year for me, and it taught me that bad things can very often lead to better things in the future. All started in January, when an irresponsible skier crashed into me on the slope. Nothing major happen to me, just ski got broken and my back was bit injured, but the worst damage happened to my mind. I was really scared to go back on the slopes. My joy from skiing went down to almost zero:( Fortunately I manage to find my way back. I went to backcountry, where things got slower, less busy and most importantly peaceful. So at the end I can say thanks to the accident I have discovered the fantastic world of ski touring, and I am enjoying skiing more than ever.
Here you can see some of my and my friends smart phone pictures from backcountry.
Few weeks later in February 2015 I did lose my job, for the first time in my long career. It was not very easy period, but again I did manage to get best out of it. I did have three months off, which I fully dedicated to family and photography. I discovered some nice location in the local Alps, I did spent a lot of time in darkroom and had a chance to print photos for my second exhibition in Prague. At the end I manage to find a new job, which I am enjoying very much.
Some photographs from my spring hiking trips last year. All photographs were taken with Mamiya RB 67 camera and Kodak T-Max black and white negatives, developed in Kodak D 76 developer. I will show more in coming months, since I have not scanned more than 90 % of negatives from this period:)
Finely, I had issue with my bellowed Kodak T-Max films. Somehow, the negatives I bought last year before summer got serious quality issues which I unfortunately discovered after I exposed a lot of rolls. I was very frustrated, and could not find out what the problem was. Therefore, I decided to try Ilford black and white negatives, and I was amazed how beautiful tonal scale these negatives have, especially the good old HP5. But it required some changes to me workflow and I really like T-Max. Therefore, I decided to contact Kodak and ask for explanation. To my big surprised they contacted me immediately and explained the whole problem to me, and as apology I received quite a lot of new rolls of T-Max and Tri-x, which are now absolutely fine and I will be able to use them again. So at the end I found out that there are still a lot of high quality negatives out there and also that Kodak really cares about their customers, even the small once like me.
Some sample photographs I manage to achieve with Ilford HP5 and of course my Mamiya RB 67.
It was my year in brief summary. I am feeling very motivated to jump back to photography again, and I am already planning some photo trips to Chamonix area, so I will get back to my current project Small World, and hopefully some new inspiration will come on the way☺