What I can offer to you.
My Philosophy	It is rather simple. I really enjoying making photographs. I use photography as a medium to express my imagination and thought. I am here to let you experience the same by looking at my photographs. As everybody who creates something, I primary do it for myself to express in better way my views, feelings and creativity. I like very much if other people understand my creations. Therefore I have few simple rules. I offer for sale and sometimes as gift my work. I do not charge crazy prices, as value and price are two different things and are totally different for different people. And that is why I choose eBay. Here everybody is free to choose to pay their own price and set their own limits for my prints All my work is archival quality and is made exclusively by myself. I develop my own negatives. I work on each image separately to fulfill my vision and produce each and every print with carbon pigment on Photo Rag paper. The result is gallery archival quality. Technology is changing every day. A few years ago I was using the darkroom to produce my silver gelatin print. Today I am using this paper, and in the next year that paper. Now I love carbon pigment. Who knows what the future will bring, what new technology will best fulfill my imagination. Therefore every image I produce is produced in limited editions. These editions are not limited artificially to satisfy collectors and galleries. They are created naturally as it always was in art. So, for example, the same image I produced in first edition in 1994 using silver gelatin in set of five prints, I produced in second edition in 2004 using carbon pigment in three prints. Each of these prints is on a back marked with edition time (2nd edition from May 2006, for example) and number within edition (1/3 for example). I stamp and sign each. I wrote article which describes and shows how do I pack my pictures for sending. You can read and find out that your photos will arrive with no damage. I write and post new my work at my personal blog and on eBay blog as well. You can subscribe to both with your RSS reader. To protect bidder privacy, when the price or highest bid on an item reaches or exceeds a certain level, User IDs will be displayed as anonymous names. For auction items, a bold price means at least one bid has been received. Note: Anonymous names may appear more than once and may represent different bidders. My Offers Item Start End Price Title High Bidder/Status Go see all current items for sale by this member. For your information current eBay time is: Sep-05-08 20:47:50 PDT I believe the is enough to explain shortly what you can expect and how I work. More, including my daily blog and articles you can read at my home page. And now little bit about my past.
	More About me.
Beginning	I was thinking for a while what shall I write about myself. Normally you ask somebody else to write this kind of text. The most common question anybody asks is when I did I start with photography. Well, it was a long time ago in country where I was born, CzechoSlovakia, a country which no longer exists as one, today. I started with my mother's 6x6 camera with mechanical shutter in lens when I was around eight to ten years old. The whole camera was just plastic box -- a cube, with lens on it. I could choose a few speeds and few aperture stops. The viewfinder was made of two glasses on top of the box. I do not recall its having any focusing, but it might have had.
Developing in bathroom	I used this camera to shoot some 120 films. The funny thing was that, at that time I needed to develop them myself, as lab was extremely expensive, and my friend and I enjoyed trying to develop it ourselves anyway. As we didn't have any tanks for developing we used cans, normally used to develop -- small ones -- inn total darkness in my friend's parents’ bathroom. We were holding the film on the edges and soaking it on bottom in developer and later in fixer, all the while moving the end of roll up and down. It was a lot of fun and I still have some developed negatives from that time. After such an adventure in total darkness the bathroom looked quite terrible. :-) Later, I started using our family camera, also 6x6, which was more sophisticated and my father was really cautious to let me try it. So, I was able to try and work with a few 6x6 cameras, which were the most common at the time. I developed my negatives and created my prints, mostly with my friend, Jan, in his parents’ house.
Searching for the perfect photo	When I was around eighteen or maybe later one of my mates from grammar school was going to get married. She was really pretty and I liked her very much. I was planning to give her a nice gift. So I decided that I will make huge print for her. The problem was that I wasn't sure what should be on picture. As it was summertime, after school had finished, I spent about six weeks, every day taking pictures and walking around. In the evenings I would darken my room home completely and for those six weeks, stored my enlarger and all chemicals there. My parents stopped talking to me. During the day I would open the windows (which were taped with dark blue paper) to get some air in. All these six weeks I was working to find the one picture. I remember that most of the time I was listening to the same tape in my player -- Tina Turner on one side and Ultravox on other. Now, after all those years, when I hear that same music, I immediately smell the smell of chemicals as that time and it all brings back those same feelings. Eventually I made a nice picture and brought it to her on her the wedding day. I have no idea how she took it and what she really thought about the picture, as we spoke shortly and after that day I am not sure if I saw her more than once or twice.
Study times	I remember being busy with photography almost constantly. I had bought second hand Canon AE-1 with 35mm lens. That was kind of my first step and I started to walk on the street, taking so called “street photography.” With another friend of mine we made nice duo. He would talk to random people on street (especially girls) and I would take pictures :-) I also sent a few pictures to one photo academy for higher education application. At the same time I also applied to a local university. Well, my parents pushed over university. Even at that time I had made a lot of pictures. The time came when I had to sell my Canon AE-1. Later I have bought other 35mm camera made in East Germany. During certain periods in my life I didn't take many pictures, as I was quite busy with study. But at the end of my studies I had the opportunity to travel to Belgium to study for six months, where I started taking pictures again and where I bought my Ricoh camera.
Full comeback	This brought me back to my love of photography, and in 1996 I joined a weekly documentary workshop with photographer Andrej Ban. This was one of the greatest experiences and I returned to photography with full focus once again. Since moving to the Netherlands in 1999 I have experimented with a few different cameras and experimented with color photography but, in the end, have come back to black and white. In 2004 I joined the photo academy in Breda and had my first non-solo exhibition in the Netherlands. In 2005 I enjoyed a portfolio course lead by Hans Zoete and published my "Nigh Mood" portfolio in group exposition in April 2006. In the years 2001-2005 I tried to catch the essence of my childhood memories and produced the body of work exposed at www.richard-vanek.eu During the same time I worked on orders from commercial customers which gave me different experience. In late 2006 and currently, I am more active with creating more emotional work and with offering my prints for sale. My current work is best seen at my every day updated home page.
What my customers say	User:speedcomonline( 2194)  Date:Jul-24-08 16:10:07 PDT Praise: Good buyer, valued customer, highly recommended. User:elcomonline( 15443)  Date:Jul-23-08 02:45:09 PDT Praise: Ik hoop nog eens zaken met je te doen. Bedankt en tot ziens bij Elcom Online! User:diytown( 31136)  Date:Jul-22-08 22:59:04 PDT Praise: Nice buyer,A++++++ To see all feedback for this member, go to the Member Profile page.