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.
Read moreCzech-in Time
I have been living in the Czech Republic for the past three years. I was also here between 2003 and 2006, which makes the total period spent in Prague 6 long years. All this time mostly working and enjoying free time with my kids and wife. When I recently browsed through my archive, I realized that I had very few images of Czech landscapes that I am happy with. It's perhaps because I actually did expose just a few rolls of Velvia in here. The very most of my photography happens on the trips out of the country, be it photo expeditions to the north of Europe that I started to travel to couple of years back, or journeys home to Slovakia where I do not need to work and can leave my family behind with their family and go shooting. :-) But that's not the end of the shame, I have to admit that I have not tried to photograph anywhere else than in the Bohemian Switzerland, which I urge myself to change no later than within the next 2-3 months when testing my new Linhof Techno kit. The learning curve seems to be steep enough to look for any opportunity to get out of home not just wait for the next trip.
Read moreGoing Larger
"The best camera is the one that you have with you." Don't know who said it but I like it a lot. Hence I always carry my best camera. So I did this past weekend when I went to Geneva to see Ota and his lovely family. The side purpose was to test my new Linhof Techno kit that I put together after struggling two months. Yes, even in today's internet times (or perhaps because of them) I had troubles to learn what bits and pieces of equipment I need to make the Techno work. And I'm yet to be delivered with cables to connect it to my Phase One. For some time already, I wished to go larger (6x9 or better 6x8) to open up fresh horizons by using the potential of controlling the perspective via moving standards. I take this as an entry ticket to a completely different world. A world that is bigger, slower and more intimate and detailed than everything I tried so far. From what I was doing with my camera for the past few years, I found out that I liked the process somewhat more than a result. I had a feeling I could not do anything else than move to this format to significantly increase the joy from a process.
Read morePhoto of the Week - May 29, 2011
This is one of the few photographs I took on Iceland, during my second trip in summer 2010, where luck played bigger role than precise preparation. There is very special thing about long exposures, you never know what the result will look like until you really see the final photograph. In this case the exposure time was 140 seconds and the ice formation was facing the incoming tide very bravely without being moved too much, so even on the big print both pieces of ice are still reasonably sharp.
Read moreLee Big Stopper
In this post I would like to share my personal experience with Lee Big Stopper ND filter, rather that provide full technical review, which you might be used to from other websites. I have been experimenting with Long Exposure techniques for couple of years. I started with just three EV stop full ND filter, which allowed me to get exposures in range from 1 to 30 seconds during the day. Latter on I become quite curios what the photographs can look like with longer exposures and I purchased ten stop round ND filter with the tread to attach to my lenses.
Read more...Let It Snow (Continued).
I took this image on our first trip to Lofoten in January. It was well after sunset and some 100+ kilometers ahead of us to Svolaer. We were returning from the place called Å, the tiny village situated endmost in the Lofoten islands. We scouted for locations to return to on our next trip as we had already decided to stay in Reine next time. I admit I have not paid too much attention to where we were when shooting this photograph because we were late and in a hurry. Moreover, Ota left me with my two and a half minutes exposure all alone. Despite the dull sky, I tried it at least for seeing how this rather unorthodox compositions would look like. Did not have too many other options as there was an ugly little quay on the left from houses.
Read moreUnspoiled Nature of Poloniny
The photograph for this week was created about a year ago when we were shooting our book 15 Treasures of Slovakia (you can browse through it online here: http://www.lightharmony.com/treasures). Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians were added on the UNESCO World Natural Heritages list on long ago, in 2007. You can find them in the very eastern part of Slovakia, on the border with Ukraine and Poland. Some of them are part of the youngest and least known national park called Poloniny. The forests are absolutely unique for being preserved in their original conditions and untouched for several thousand years. Not too many people know that they contain the world's tallest beech trees.
Read moreJoe Cornish - A Photographer at Work
I'm sure I'm not going to surprise many of you nor I'm going to be very original when I say that Joe Cornish is one of the few photographers that I have been looking at in search for inspiration for the past few years. I've been a happy owner of couple of Joe's books with The First Light sitting in my bookshelf on a special place. It was the very first book where I could find exactly what I was then looking for - stunning images in combination with educational stories. Even now, it's never boring to browse through it and enjoy photographs full of colors and empathy for various subjects, just to use some of superlatives one can say when looking at Joe's work.
Read morePhoto of the Week - May 12, 2011
Skogafoss is one of the most beautiful waterfalls on Iceland and also one of the most visited and photographed spots in the country. When we saw how many people are observing the waterfall during the day we decided to avoid the crowds and come at night, which fortunately never gets too dark during the long summer days.
Read moreIceland - Video
In this presentation you can see selection of my photographs I have taken on Iceland during two visits in this spectacular place. The first visit took place in summer 2009 and I had not particularly strong idea where to go and how to photograph Icelandic landscape. However, after the first arctic summer night I was sure that this place can give me a lot of opportunities to use my camera:)
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