I just returned from long expected and looked forward to journey to High Tatras, my home land. Spending 4 days with one of my best photography buddies, Stefan Mestan (see his gallery), walking long hours below cloudless skies and familiarizing with my linhof techno was both, exciting and refreshing. As it always is when I get out there to do nothing but shoot. I'm now looking at processed slides and I have to confess that I never returned back from any trip with such pathetic results. The autumn has not come and likely won't this year - instead of rich yellows of birch trees and reds of rowans, we only saw leafs that were drying up alive. We saw far too much grey and perhaps two-three clouds, not more.
Read morePhoto of the Week - September 26, 2011
The longer I do have photography as a hobby, the more it represents an open dialogue between me and nature, rather than speed and quantity oriented picture taking, how It used to right at the beginning of my photography journey. I am personally trying to develop my own active dialogue with nature, but in the same time I am trying to hear or better to say observe ongoing dialogues between other different nature objects and I put myself in the position of distant listener, who does not want to interrupt ongoing discussions.
Read moreFrom the Air
There are things in life that money can't buy. I love spending time with my kids as they both are quite funny little midgets. And I have to admit that not too much less I like photographing. I have been (and still I'm) dreaming of how to combine the two the earliest possible that is actually impossible now since when I go shooting, they have to sleep and vice versa. On top of that (and somewhat off-topic I know), I hate heights. But when I somehow manage to overcome my fears, I feel a vast euphoria.
Read moreIce Cave Patterns
We usually shoot our Earth in its various forms and fashions from the ground. Those happier of us get up in the air and photograph from there. But there's an incredible beauty below its surface, too. In Slovakia, we're lucky to have as many as 2,400 caves (wikipedia) of which about 400 have been explored. One tenth of them is open for public. I rather believe that these are the most picturesque and fascinating. Because five are included in UNESCO World Heritage. :-)
Read morePhoto of the Week - September 12, 2011
Today I would like to share with you one of my recent photographs, which I took at the end of August close to Anthy Sur Leman in France. It is part of my ongoing project “Lac Leman” and I have been photographing this exact place for couple of times already and I have never been really happy with results. So this is my first attempt I am willing to show to others, I guess it is not perfect, but at least it gets some of the things I was hopping for. The weather turned out to be almost perfect, it was little bit chilly in the morning and stormy clouds were quite quickly approaching the lake. I was on location some time before sunrise trying to observe it before setting up tripod and camera, but most importantly I was enjoying the quiet morning with only few ducks and some other wild births wondering around. I really like the time at the end of vacation season, when mornings by the lake get nicely quiet again and one can really relax. I am planning to travel more around the lake this upcoming winter. First of all, I want to discover some new places, but I want to keep returning to already know locations like this one. I have quite a few photographs in my mind, so lets hope that I will have a chance to take them.
Read moreFrom a Distance
Sometimes I like to look back at my work that I created few years ago. Except for studying places I witnessed and might go to again one day, I'm also trying to see if and how I developed as a photographer. The results vary. In many cases, I would not show a photograph to public for either mistakes in exposure, composition or post-process, or because I changed my tastes and simply stopped being confident about an image. Some other shots, I would not even push the trigger as I got my eye better trained for seeing a potential of a scene. On the other hand, there are couple of photographs that I doubt I will ever be able to beat. This is where the weather conditions were right, I used the right equipment and focal length, I somehow managed to build a nice composition and even measure the light precisely.
Read morePhoto of the Week - August 28, 2011
This is probably my favorite photograph from both trips to Iceland. I took it last year in the northern part of Iceland in area called Krafla. There were definitely much more interesting subjects to photograph, but I was quite impressed with this view, where the last remaining snow splotches created a great contrast against green grass and dark cloudy sky. It was also one of my first experiences with medium format analog camera. I had had my Contax 645 for just few weeks before this trip. Unfortunately, I do still do not have a long lens, so I had to use standard 80 mm lens instead. I was little bit worried that the sky will be little bit to big for such small motive like that, so I decided to use long exposure, and was hoping that the moving clouds will get the very much needed third dimension to this relatively flat scene, and I was also hoping that the photograph would get the kind of feeling of “unstoppable time”.
Read moreMy Linhof Techno Challenge
Unlike the last two years when I traveled to Iceland, I did not do much photography this July and August. My preferences changed lately more towards winters and scarce time resources allow me to accommodate just one serious trip a year. As I do not like the summer lighting in Central Europe that is too fast and too early too harsh, I did not really go out at all. Not mentioning crazy times of having to get up when set for any short trip outside Prague if I want to catch the first light. Apart from spending great deal of time with kids on few trips (they are just big enough to start appreciate nature and hiking), I kept myself busy building my new kit and trying to understand how my new Linhof Techno works in real life and what else I will need before I actually can start making images.
Read morePhoto of the Week – August 7, 2011
Today was quite special day for me, since I went to a first photo workshop in my life. The topic was traditional black and white printing, and my tutor was one of the best printers in Geneva region, or maybe in whole Switzerland, Aurélien Garzarolli from Actinic studio here in Geneva. We started at 9 am with some introduction to silver gelatin black and white process and after a while I was learning how to use masking tools for dodging and burning with some prints on RC paper. In the afternoon, when I got some confidence with using the masking tools, I had a chance to start with printing on baryta papers (Ilford Multigrade FB Warmtone). I do realize that I am still influence by this experience, but watching the photograph to slowly emerge on baryta paper is somehow special and when I saw the final photograph under normal light, with all the deep shadows, rich whites and smooth gradient in mid tones, I was very very impressed, despite the fact that my mentor was not so happy about my first print, but that was kind of expected:)
Read morePeace in Mind
I have been silent in recent days traveling (no photography) and recovering and traveling again. I returned today from Slovenia where I had some noble plans that did not come true because: a) the sun rose too early, b) I stayed up too long, c) I met too many friends, d) there were too many storms, e) my dearest daughter reminded good old forgotten Roald Dahl to me after no less than 20 years and I was too busy re-discovering his unbelievably comical stories. All of the above is a cause I carried some pointless cargo but at the same time I call all of it rest. It was really nice rest till Friday when whole my heart and all my thoughts went to Norway. I travelled there two times this year and fell in love with it. I consider Norway as one the most beautiful and peaceful countries I have been to. What happened is so sad and painful and no words have a power to express it. So I only browse through my images from Lofoten looking for one that is perhaps showing how tranquil the place was, is and always will be...
Read morePhoto of the Week - July 17, 2011
I took this photograph this year in February during my trip to Norway. It was one one the many photo trips I have been together with Marek. However, I now more and more prefer to go out taking pictures on my own, traveling with Marek is always very easy and of course a lot of fun. Even though, we have been visiting the same places for many years we very rarely manage to get similar photographs. I guess that it has also something to do with the fact that we both are using different medium, Marek color slide film Fuji Velvia and I use black and white films or converting the digital files to black and white latter. This trip to Lofoten was little bit different, since unlike for example Iceland, there were not many opportunities to spread around the locations and find different subjects matters.
Read moreThe Process or The Result?
I think too many words destroys this image hence this time I won't be too disappointed if you tell me you did not read the text. On the other hand, I have a good reason to write about this one so in case anyone interested, please read on.
Read moreBlack and White Workflow – Part 1
Quite a lot of people, including my friends from Lightharmony, have been asking me how do I do mine Black and White conversions. So finally I have forced myself to start with this little tutorial about my workflow and black and white landscape photography in general. My attraction to black and white photography started sometime back in 2005, and as I mentioned in previous blog the main trigger for me was John Sexton’s book “Recollections”, where I was so impressed by all the different tones of gray, the precise compositions and the overall strong atmosphere of the photographs that I wanted to try it by myself. The whole transition process from color to black and white photography took me couple of years and approximately from early 2009 I have been seeing the world exclusively in tones of gray. I can say that this switch opens entirely a new world of landscape photography for me. Since, I am now focusing on composition and subject matter more than before and I am trying to keep my photographs as simple as possible. I have found that in some of my older color photographs colors play to big role and more or less are substituting for not very strong compositions. I also think that black and white photographs have kind of more abstract and mystery feel, which forces viewers to use fully their imagination:)
Read morePhoto of the Week - July 4, 2011
I took this photograph in February 2011 during our family vacation on Gran Canaria. We have been returning to the same place every year since our son was born in 2006. I know that family holiday and landscape photography do not necessary match together, but I am quite lucky that my loved family members let me spend some mornings alone by the Atlantic Ocean cost and focus on my photography. This year was quite tough for me since the weather conditions were not in favor to me and I was quite disappointed already on the very first morning since I did not get the chance to take the photographs I was pre-visualizing back home. Unfortunately, the same weather conditions had persisted also during my second morning and cloudless blue sky forced me to rethink my objectives and I went to explore nearby sand dunes, which is very beautiful small area with a lot of photo possibilities, but very often visited by many tourists so the amazing dunes structures are destroyed by footprints and in the worse case by trash left over by some irresponsible people.
Read moreCountless Reasons to Love High Tatras
I perhaps do not know of any single photographer of landscape who would not nourish a special bias for a place or two and I'm of course no exception. I was grown below magnificent High Tatras so one can easily guess what my favorite spot is. The truth is that I have far less good Tatras images worth sharing than what the place deserves. One of the reason is that I enjoy just being out there much more than anywhere else and I do not feel distracted when I sometimes return home without even pulling a camera out of the bag.
Read morePrix de la Photographie Paris 2011
I am more than happy to share my little success in the world of photography with you today. I was awarded a bronze medal for my entry "Iceland - Long Exposure" at the Prix de la Photographie Paris 2011 in category Book Proposal-Nature (Non-Professional). You can find out more about the competition here www.px3.fr . It was quite surprising when I found out about the result and in the same time it is also quite encouraging for the future.
Read morePhoto of the Week - June 19, 2011
I moved to Geneva in 2007 and since than the surrounding mountains were the primer target for my photography and I have been trying to get up there as often as possible. I have quite a stressful day job, so it has also been giving me the opportunity to relax and handle the daily stress a little bit better. I very often came back home from my mountain hikes physically exhausted, but with fresh mind ready for another day. When some time passed by, and we were getting more and more settled here in Geneva, I have begun to pay attention to other photo locations in my neighbourhood, and guess who was the first obvious candidate. Of course it was the lake, one of the biggest in Western Europe. To give you a brief description, the lake is split 60/40 between Switzerland and France. In Switzerland itself it goes trough three cantons (Geneva, Vaud and Valais) covering the total area of 345 square kilometres. While the entire world knows the lake under the name Lake Geneva, the locals - meaning all the many great cities on the Swiss and neighbour French shores - call it Lac Leman.
Read moreNotes from Iceland II.
Continued from here. Hveravellir can be read as Hot Spring Fields and also looks and smells like that. In general, it's rather small geothermal place with smoking fumarolees and with colored boiling pools. You can jump and relax in one of them. It is an interesting experience to see and walk around but I was much more amazed by the surroundings of the road that led us there. Well, the road was sort of different, more adventurous of what we in Europe normally call road - our landcruiser proved to be the right tool to drive on it safely and relatively comfortably. Everything else around made me feel like I returned millions of years back in time. This is how the Earth must have looked like when it was being created.
Read moreShooting After Dusk
Many landscape photographers love shooting in times of the day between the dusk and dawn. Lighting conditions that are unusual for our eyes can change any subject to an unrecognized quality. Depending on a medium used, sceneries may be gaining hues and tones that we can't see by us. The element of a surprise is the source of endless excitement for me anytime I have the opportunity to photograph after dusk, especially when using Velvia.
Read moreMy Book Collection
I guess that I do not have to convince you that photography is my hobby number one, but believe me not the only one. As many other people I do have the desire to collect things, therefore I have decided to collect photography books few years ago. I started with more technical ones. Especially at the beginning when I was trying to learn the basics of photography. After a while, when I did understand the principles of exposition, depth of field and composition, I had moved a little bit further towards the books dealing with the essence of art and aesthetics of photography.
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