Zdenka Micka Photography Blog

Europe 2010 - Czech Repulic and Slovakia

2010-09-06T10:44:00.000-07:00

This summer went by very fast for me. I went to Europe to visit my family as I always do every year. This time I brought little Tomas with me to meet his new relatives. We also visited Slovakia to see other side of family. My husband's side. It was absolutely fantastic trip. Tomas loved it, I had fun too. I also realized how much I want be there instead of being in Canada. Main reason is feeling a guilt that Tomas is so far away from Grandparents and other relatives. I am also liking the lifestyle better....I am not planning anything crazy yet, but who knows what will happen in a few years...

Here are some of my favorite photos I took...

Back at work....

2010-05-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

My maternity leave is over and I am officially back at work. Since the fact I have studio in the house, I have my son with me 24/7. I hope my future clients won't mind my breastfeeding breaks and also that my son will be playing close by.... It has been great to spend some quality time with my son and my husband since he is at home as well... his injury is healing fast. This week he started rehabilitation which means he will be walking again very soon.

What I am also going to introduce very soon is baby photography packages. I used to be afraid taking photos of kids because they are so impatient when it comes to taking photos. Ever since I have my son, I realized that it is fun and the best photos are candids... natural light, no flashes... here are some favorite of mine....

2010-03-01T10:43:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that this year started a bit raugh for me. First I got mastitis infection to my breast shortly after I gave birth to my son. Once this was cured I got another infection into my both breasts... yeast... My baby had it on his tongue. Some of you might know that breastfeeding gets very painfull when you have this. This took me about 5 weeks to cure. This week I am first time pain free and I am hoping the worst is over... well... Last week my baby Tomas got his first cold which was bad as 2 months old baby has hard time dealing with bad caugh and stuffed nose. I had some scary mornings but now he feels much better. I got it a bit from him too so I am blowing my nose as I write this.... . when I just thought things are getting good, this happenes....

Yesterday I got call from my husband in the afternoon from emergency. He went to play volleyball and tore is achillis on his leg. Well, so far we don't know if it is achillis or perhaps torn muscle. We will know more tomorrow when he will visit specialist. The problem is he already had snapped achillis on the other leg and had to go through some surgeries to fix this. He played professional hocky his whole life which is now giving him many health problems. So here I am taking care of my sick child, myself and now my husband. Milan is practically in the bad all the long either sleeping from pain medications or using laptop. I am just surprised he has to wait 2 days before some doctor is able to see him. I thought they will do it in the hospital... oh well....

This all means that I am running around like crazy... but still very possitive that things will get better eventually...

Here is a funny photo collage of Tomas when we were treating his trush on tongue with Gentian Violet.

A bit different Christmas this year...

2010-01-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010 EVERYONE!!!!

I know I haven't posted here anything for a while. I do have a reason why I took a break. Beautiful reason... Some of you might know that I was pregnant. Some of you actually worked with me during pregnancy. It was difficult to shoot in my 8th and 9th month but I still worked as much as I could. My due date was Dec. 30th which is also my birthday. I stopped shooting around Dec. 10th as my husband and I felt it would be the best to just relax to make sure I don't harm our little one due to heavy lifting, not breathing right during photoshoot (I sometimes have to hold the breath not to shake the camera) and moving around too much. I thought to myself that I will have some quiet Christmas and then perhaps the 30th or later the little one will arrive. My whole pregnancy was great, except the first 3 months when I was really sick. Well, the end took a bit different turn.... but at the end we are both healthy and happy. I would like to share with you my...

BIRTH STORY:

Sunday, Dec. 20th I started out of sudden getting extreme pain in my lower back on the left side. It felt like kidney stones or something like that. I had a feeling it is not a labor pain. I called the hospital in case and they told us to come in. After a quick check up, they told me I am in early labor and that if the pain gets steady or not going away, I should come back. They actually said the baby would be born that night or next day.

I went home walking and surprisingly the pain stopped in the evening. Then at night it started again for about and hour, Monday nothing... until the night when it started hurting me a lot for steady an hour. Tuesday nothing again and it started hurting in the afternoon and at night. I knew something is not right and it is not labor pain but my kidney.

Wednesday morning, 23rd, at 8:45 am I saw my OB and told him all about the pain. After he tapped on my back he said, yes there is something going on with kidney. He sent me to the hospital to see a specialist and possibly to induce the labor.

I arrived to the hospital around 11am. Doctor checked me and said that I am 3 cm dialated. He checked the kidney, let me stay on monitor for some more... once he came back, he told me that he wants to break the water to start labor. I was scared and nervous. I was scared for the little one but I was releaved that I am in the hospital taken care off.

He broke my water at 11:20am and all he said...."the baby doesn't like it there, he passed his first stool inside, I am really happy we did this and decided to break the water".

Once we moved to delivery room, I started slowly getting contractions. Small, not hurting as much. At 4pm they decided to give me IV and induce the labor since it wasn't working fast enough. Once I got the chemical... oh man.... contractions came quickly, extremely strong and lasted long time. I was checked again later on and still only 3 cm dialated. I couldn't take the pain anymore so I asked for pain releave since I wasn't progressing fast enough and I didn't want to face this pain for another 8 hours or so...

They gave me epidural and it worked like a miracle. Only at that time I didn't know that I made a very good choice. As soon as I got the epi, nurse checked me and said...."wow you are 9.5cm we can start pushing". I couldn't beleive it. She said that sometimes the epi relaxes the woman and she just out of sudden opens up. Before they let my husband in my baby's heart rate was going up so they had me moving from side to side and breathing oxygen to bring his heart rate back to normal. This took about 5 min.

My husband came back to my room and was very surprised I was actually smiling, not feeling pain and telling him we are going to push. I started pushing and pushing... after about 2 hours doctor came in to see the progress... he kept asking if I have the strengh to keep going. I felt like a bull... I had tons of energy to keep going the whole night if I had to. I ended up pushing another hour and doctor offered me to use vacuum cup to help the baby out. He was big so he got stock in my pelvis. He assured me that he will be carefull and it is the best way to go at this time. I agreed and we started.

He had to cut me open as I was extremely swolen after that long pushing. Within 10 min he was out. Totally I pushed for 3.5 hours which is long. I couldn't beleive when doctor allowed me to touch his head as he was coming out. I couldn't beleive it when I saw him first time. I was crying heavily and my husband as well. We were holding each other as we were watching the nurses to taking care of our little one.

Tomas was born Dec. 23rd at 23 hours and 23 min at 39 weeks of pregnancy. He was 55cm long, weight almost 9 pounds. Healthy and beautiful.

I had to stay in the room for another 2 hours as doctor was working on my episiotomy . He said he hasn't seen anything like it and he hasn't done that many stiches... oh well.....

Once I was ready to go to recovery room they wanted me to go to bathroom first. Well, as soon as I got there, I got dizzy and almost passed out. They quickly took me back to bad and gave me another IV as my blood pressure was really low.

So, the labor was quite interesting, nurses kept coming to me afterwards saying "you are the one who had the hard labor". I just smiled back happily.... I did it. I cannot beleive I did it.

It was absolutely the best feeling in the world I ever experienced to see him come out and having my husband on my side.... just incredible.

And.... hopefully, if everything goes well... I'll do it again soon.....

So here you have it. We returned home Dec. 25th early afternoon. I have to admit, I found the return be too early for me. I still couldn't walk, sit, move around and was not ready to take care of little one without help of nurses. First 2 days were a bit hard but then things got better. We are home now 18 days and I must say it is great. Tomas has his own schedule now and things are getting organized.

What else can I say? It is the truth about what they say... You don't feel as a complete woman until you give birth. It is the best feeling in the world.

Latest Shoot with Iona

2009-10-19T11:05:00.000-07:00

The year is getting closer to the end. This also means that my pregnancy is coming closer to the end as well. Only 10 more weeks to go and we'll have little child at home. I will be taking about a month break from photography, well perhaps less... we will see how things go. I just simply have hard time saying no to clients. Iona asked me to do another shoot with her, this time last one of this beauty this year. I am sure we will work together again sometimes in the spring time. Here is what we did:
I just love this new gold material we used together with makeup artist Hafsa. The makeup and gold outfit pulled the look nicely together.

Another Indian outfit this time with more dramatic outfit.

Something different for Iona. I don't think she ever shot fitness before. I think she had fun even though she giggled here and there...

Latest Shoot with Eunice Arbis

2009-09-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

Last week was really a good week. I had few great photoshoots. One of them really stood out. Her name is Eunice and she is trully one of the best and most exotic models around. How did we meet? I beleive we met online via Model Mayhem few years ago. First time we actually got chance to shoot together was about 2 years ago. We shot for Poolscape, company which builds luxury and upscale pools. We did small shoot for company brochure and we also managed to get front page cover of national magazine Pools and Spa.

I called makeup artist Melanie Sivitilli to do something special. This shoot is intended for stock agencies so we made sure we covered some topics such as beauty, fitness, evening look, disco and creative fall beauty shot.

I have to say I love working with Eunice and I will defenitely call her soon again. Her personality is very friendly and laid back. Even Melanie was surprised. What else can I say about Eunice? She has recently been competing at Miss Petite Canada compeition, where she won 3 titles... simply said... beauty little lady....

Latest Shoot with Iona Catalina

2009-08-30T06:17:00.001-07:00

Iona Catalina is not a beginner... defenitely not. I remember the times when we used to model together. I like working with Iona because she is really professional and knows how to move in front of the camera really well. This time, she surprised me with this Indian Bridal Dress. I liked the idea so we went ahead and shot this set.

Summer is almost gone and I know I promised myself to shoot on the beach a lot. I don't know why but it didn't happen for me again this year. I did few shoots but nothing major. We'll see what the next year will bring.

Latest Shoot with Marion B.

2009-08-19T05:55:00.001-07:00

It has been a while since I posted some new shots. I have been shooting a lot I just didn't have a time to update my website or this Blog. Summer is almost over so I can finally sit down and do some editing. First model I would like to introduce is Marion B. This is our first time shooting together. I must say I am quite pleased with our images. She is a really quiet girl....

Horuce Leto 68 Slovakia Tour 2009

2009-07-23T05:28:00.000-07:00

So how was Europe? Some of you probably know that I took off for 3 weeks to Slovakia and Czech republic. The main reason of my visit was playing theater in Slovakia for 10 days. Our tour started in Trnava, then we moved to Nitra, Martin and ended up in Bratislava.

Flight to Europe was quite good. The only problem I had was that I couldn't move my seat back since I was sitting at the exit seat. So the whole time I was trying to somehow get comfortible and sleep a little which was tough job. I had to also deal with a bit of naussea (for those who know I am pregnant...) which was just on the way to dissapear.

First 2 days we were rehearsing with new actor Marian since one of us couldn't go. First show in Trnava blew us away. We had standing ovation and great success. To our surprise this was repeating everywhere we went. People clapping, not wanting us to leave the stage. This was all we wanted.

The whole tour was great except one emergency. Our loving Jurka got very ill. He had a bit problems walking on our second show which noticed a little, but was threw us away was when he collapsed at the breakfast the next day. Immediately he was taken to hospital where they found out that he has tumor in his brain. This news was shocking to us. He was then taken back to Canada, where he remains in hospital. His health is in a very bad condition, getting worse every day. We are praying for him each day... "We love you Jurka....."

After the last show we said good bye and each of us went his/her own way. I left with my parents to my home where I stayed with them the rest of this vacation. It was great to be home. Seeing my parents, grandma, cousins... and everyone else was all I wanted. I had time to relax in the mountains which was great. It was the last time I went with my husband home alone. Next time, we are bringing a little one with us......

Here is our group photo... you can see belly shaping up...lol....

2009-03-24T14:46:00.000-07:00

St. Patrick's Day with Mira & Karl

Few weeks ago I was just sitting at home when I got a call from our friends. Very exciting and happy phone call about her daughter's upcoming wedding. I was asked to take some photos for this couple. To tell you the truth, I am one of those people which never knows when there is some holiday coming up. I remember Christmas, that is important.... lol..... When she told me about St. Patrick's Day... I was like... When? As soon as she told me the date I realized it is coming up very soon.

Since it was so sudden, I was driving to Kitchener-Waterloo on the wedding day thinking... I haven't met the couple, I have no clue how it looks like there, I have no clue where we will take pictures...

You know... no planning is sometimes the best thing when it comes to creativity... just take a look at this fairy tale wedding day with Mira & Karl.

Dear Mira & Karl, thank you for such a beautiful wedding. I would love to wish happy years together filled with love and understanding. It was a plesure meeting you both.....

El Yaque, Margarita Island, Venezuela 2009.... part 2

2009-03-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Finally, I had time to finish editing our vacation video and it is ready for you to view it. It is just a fun video where you can see what we were doing on our vacation in Venezuela. I have to appologize for shaken video here and there... yeap... I am getting old. I forgot a tripod at home. I realized it when I got there but it was already too late. Anyhow... here it is:

El Yaque, Margarita Island - Venezula.... part1

2009-02-20T10:42:00.000-08:00

Just about a week ago I was in an absolute dreamland called "El Yaque" which is located in Margarita Island, Venezuela. It was our "honeymoon" .... I know we got married a year ago. We just didn't have a chance to go anywhere alone. We usually travel with a bunch of friends so this trip made it very special as it was only two of us..... still getting the butterflies......lol....

What keeps us together as a couple is understanding each other, openess, communication and hobbies. Our biggest hoppy we have together is windsurfing. El Yaque Beach is a playground just for that. It is a little place. Beach is only 1 km long and all you see there is one windsuring place after another. We stayed there 2 weeks and it was windy almost every single day. It was just unbeleivable. We were in a water sometimes even 6 hours straight.... it was just so much fun.

What was also cool is there were few pros windsurfing as well, doing these crazy flips and turns so there was always something to watch as you will be able to see on video when I am done with it.

What I absolutely cannot forget to mention is how many incredible people we met during this trip. What mainly surprised us, how many Czech and Slovak people we met there. Just to name few.... Jana, Tina, Daniel, Daniela (thank you for showing us Margarita Island... we will never forget), Petr, Ada...... and most of all, we cannot forgot a group of American friends..... Mark, Dave, Michael, Mike.... you were awesome and we miss you guys.

We were surrounded by very possitive people and this was such a great eye opener for us.....

Anyhow... back to windsurfing. I started doing this sport because of my husband Milan. I wanted to try it because it is his passion. Luckily for us, I also fell in love with this sport. When I got to Margarita, I was a bit nervous because there are some waves and strong winds I wasn't used to. First day was a horrible. I was falling all the time, I couldn't even turn... couldn't do beach start... just frustrating. Few days later, I got used to the waves and strong wind wasn't bothering me anymore. What I wanted the most was finally "to plain". It is process when you got very fast almost flying over the water. Board is barely touching the water. My biggest problem was my own fear. I finally did it the very last day. I couldn't beleive it. I was soooo super excited and I didn't want to go home yet.... When I finally got to plain I realized how this sport is amazing. I suddenly saw it from a totally different perspective... no more pushing water in front of me and fighting the wind..... haha.... I guess the last day I got finally relaxed enough and wasn't pushing it happen anymore.... it just did happened on its own.... but it was sooooo AWESOME!!!! See you next year Margarita!

Take a look at this amazing place......:

Horuce Leto 68

2009-01-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year 2009 to everyone!!!

This week is one of my most exciting weeks in early new year 2009. About 4 months ago I agreed on taking a small part in Slovak Theather here in Toronto. It is a small community theater, all actors are volunteering their time to bring something to our Czech and Slovak friends living in Canada.

It is my first theater play. I always acted in TV/Film and commercials only but never tried film. I have to say that so far it is lots of fun. Finally, this week is the big day!!! Friday Jan. 9th and Saturday Jan 10th, we will be performing live.... my husband and myself.

This way, I would love to invite all Czech and Slovak people living in Toronto and GTA to come to view this great play!.... This play is unfortunately in Czech and Slovak language only.....

Here is full invitation... also the rest of information can be seen here:

http://www.torontskeslovenskedivadlo.com/KLIMACEK-concept/KLIM-presentation-START.htm

Winter Shoots

2008-12-17T10:01:00.001-08:00

Christmas is right around the corner, we are all getting into winter mood once again. I wasn't behind of course. One of the last shoots I did was with Michelle Thorn. I met this girl few years ago and we have now about 3 shoots behind us. I wanted to shoot with a snow but try to get thin model outside when it is -10 degrees.... so I decided to come up with something cool. I ran to my favorite dollar store and I got fake snow. I love this snow the only bad part is that you have to vacuum the house few times to get rid of it.... I am kidding, it is not as bad. Here are samples of what we've created.

Besides Michelle I had few "No Shows" again so I had nobody to shoot. I grabbed few items to work on some Christmas cards..

Since New Years Eve is also coming up, I tried to come up with some Champagne celebration sets. I had fun arranging this set, unfortunately the bottle stayed unopened and I instead of Champagne in the glasses, I had some ginger ale.... got to wait to New Years I guess.....

Once I saw a photo of a girl coming out of flower. I wanted to play a bit and see what I can digitally create. Here is Anissa Holmes..... the bathing beauty.

Indian Catalogue

2008-11-07T15:33:00.000-08:00

About 2 weeks ago I had a really great shoot with Iona Catalina. I know this model for about 8 years now and I have to admit that we haven't seen each other for few years until she contacted me again. We finally got together again for a quick shoot and then another one... Indian Catalogue. This shoot was a very long one. I think we worked about 10 hours as you can see Iona had to wear many outfits, we had to change hair, accessories quite often as well. I think there was about 25 outfits total. If you want to order some dresses go to: http://www.shopdare.com/

That day I was using my close friend and makeup artist Christina Trozzolo. It is such a pleasure to work with this girl. She is great artist and fun person as well. Iona and Christina became friends during the shoot... Thank you ladies for such a hard work!!!

Theater Stage

2008-11-01T20:40:00.000-07:00

Last few weeks has been incredibely busy for me. I guess you can tell since I haven't updated my blog for some time now. I have been working on few projects. One of them is a new experience for me. I studied acting in The New School of Drama in Toronto and so far I had been featured in few commercials and movies. Two months ago, I have been offered to be in one of Theater plays. Now, theater is completely different acting from film. I thought it would be fun to try it out for once so here am I going 3x a week for rehearsals and studying my lines like crazy. I am already having a stage fright now and it is not January yet. Keep the fingers crossed... hopefully I'll survive. I'll make sure to post some photos and small video from this play. It is called "Summer 68" and I am a young doctor.....:)... funny, hey??

Dirty Giving

2008-10-10T05:42:00.001-07:00

Few weeks ago we started planning party called DIRTY GIVING. This party is happening this Sunday, October 12th in Toronto. It is last party of the year for DirtyMag. ca. It is going to be lots of fun. We will have Dirty Kitten and Rookies wearing special costumes, sashes, giving out cards, free autographed posters. I will be shooting there guests arriving in front of a giant poster looking as a magazine cover. Before I start writing about the cover shot, check out special EVITE: http://www.clubculture.com/hyde/dirty/index.html and if you are interested to come, drop me a line to be added on a guest list.

When we were planning the party we knew that we have to create some special image for Thanksgiving. We had some good laugh over the image of girl holding a turkey. Of course that wouldn't be as sexy. I just see Mr. Been with turkey on his head... anyhow....

I have to thank to beautiful lady Melissa Anfuso for making this theme so pretty. I have to give a special credit to Melissa which figured out how to wear the leaves... great job!

I know I said many times I am done with modeling... but it is hard to leave this world. I jumped on the other side of the camera and posed as well. I have thank to my student photographer, my husband Milan which took these wonderfull images of myself.

Melissa Anfuso shoot!

2008-09-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

I had to sit down today leave all my work aside to work on few images from yesterday's shoot. I usually don't shoot Sundays but yesterday was an exception. Well, I was supposed to shoot with Melissa Anfuso last weekend but unfortunately we missunderstood each other so she thought the shoot wasn't confirmed. I ended up placing blinds on the windows instead... anyways.... It was such an awesome day.

Melissa showed up with few outfits planned so it was easy to just shoot my life away. First outfit was just a regular pink lingerie... nothing special.. just to get warmed up a bit.

Then we took a small break.. I had a cup of coffee, Melissa had little time for her bad habbit.... ha ha... sorry Melissa.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about our sailor outfit shoot. I wasn't prepared that she is going to bring such a cool outfit so I had to quickly think where I am going to get a boat in about 1 hour. I went through list of my friends in a head very quickly. I remembered that I just spoke to Ben about a boat his brother has... So there it was!
I didn't hesitate to pick up the phone and call me for permission. Before we went there we still had to shoot some sexy stuff......

Finally we packed and left to Ben's place to shoot the sailor outfit. Do you want to know how glamourous shoots really are? Well guess what? Here is the actual result and take a look where we shot this cool boat!!! Yes, that right. You don't have to even go on the lake. Funny hey?? You can actuallyl see Ben posing for me on one the pictures as well.

The last outfit was here to do. Wet look... I took the first street to the lake since I saw storm coming. I wanted to shoot it quick and I had no idea what is around us. Luckily we found a really cool location. Take a look at this awesome set.

I have to say that Melissa is absolutely a professional model. The whole day she didn't complain about anything... not even the cold water shoot. She loved and so did I!.. Thanks Melissa for such an awesome shoot!!!!

Russian beauty Anna

2008-09-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

Today was another shoot for my magazine http://www.dirtymag.ca/ We were shooting Dirty Rookie for September 08, brand new face Anna. I think it was her 4th time in front of the camera. Very fresh. I like the fact she is Russian.. there is something about those European girls...:)
Anyhow.. as quiet and shy as she was, there was a very funny moment when our DirtyMag videographer Ben took a walk around Anna when she accidently almost slapped him. She wasn't aware of him, and he took the hit. ... we all had a good laugh about that. Take a peak... other then that, nobody got seriously injured.

I better get some rest now. It is going to e a very busy weekend... 2 more shoots to go...

Past Online Diary Notes...

2008-09-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

Some of you might wonder if I erased all my past online diary notes. I didn't erase them... of course NOT! They are right here: http://www.zdenkamicka.net/onlinediary1.html
I intend to keep this link up for a very long time, so I can ony assure you that they are not going anywhere.

Have fun!

Big Changes?

2008-09-07T20:07:00.001-07:00

Yes, that is correct. Big changes here. It all started last week. New computer, more space, faster machine.... it is time to make some big changes. I have to confess that I had no time to update my website for a long time. The reason why is simple... old slow computer. So here I am sitting, organizing my portfolios, website and here I am creating the first post to my blog. I know it is probably just non-sense, but hey, it is my first blog. So there you have it. Blog is officially open.