RAFALKROL

Dublin, Ireland
Rafal was born and grew up in Bielsko-Biala, Poland. In 2004 when Poland become a member of the European Union and the borders were open, he came to Ireland and have lived here since. Rafal bought his first camera (small compact Pentax S30) to record his stay abroad. After the initial fascination of having a camera and taking photographs of everything everywhere, began to focus on minimalistic black and white seascape and landscape photography for the past few years. Nature, the sea coast and the mountains always have been inspiring to him. These are places he enjoys visiting most, a place to rest and restore the vital energy. Apart from that, he loves capturing the everyday matters we encounter daily, places and the people, that
pass on the way to work or the store. If for some reason he is nos able visit the open air, grabs his camera and goes out for a walk around the city.
For the last few years he mostly uses two medium format 6x6 film cameras, Hasselblad and Holga. Hasselblad is just technical marvel, even despite the age, his is more than 30 years old always works fine, giving the best quality image, so it is the best medium format 6x6 film camera ever. Holga, with its low quality lens, is the opposite; rather than showing crispness,
edge to edge sharpens and perfect exposure, the pictures produced by Holga are typified by distortion, vignettes and blur.
Both cameras use 120 medium format film, and produce 12 images only form one roll of film.
Rafal uses Holga camera mainly for the widely understood street photography and urban landscape (cityscapes).
Minimalism and simplicity are his magic world and he likes to keep everything as simple as possible including photography. Rafal believes the lack of colour allows an observer to focus more on the frame and composition.

Awards and Exhibitions
International Photo Award (IPA) 2011
Architecture, Bridges Non-pro 1st Place
Architecture, Buildings Non-pro 3rd Place
6x Honorable Mention
IPA 2012 3x Honorable Mention
IPA 2013 Fine Art: Landscape Non-pro 3rd Place
2x Honorable Mention
IPA 2014 3x Honorable Mention
IPA 2015 4x Honorable Mention
PX3 International Photo Competition, Paris 2015
Fine Art, Landscape Non-pro, 3rd Place
2x Honorable Mention
Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Annual Art Exhibition 2014, 2018, 2019
Royal Ulster Academy, Belfast, 133rd Annual Art Exhibition, 2015
Photo Ireland Festival, The Library Project Gallery, Print Fair, Dublin 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
Hang Tough Gallery, Dublin 2019.

Interviews
Analog Magazine, Ireland
Computer Arts, UK
Adore Noir Magazine, USA
Square Magazine, Canada
Spanish website Culturamas.es
https://www.culturamas.es/2020/01/21/un-mundo-magico

CONTACT AND LINKS

Links
www.rafalkrolphotography.com
www.facebook.com/RafalKrolPhotography
www.instagram.com/rafalkrolphotography