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.
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