This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness. – Dalai Lama XIV 50mm; ISO 2000. 1/13th second at f11

The new, expanded edition of my Night Visions book, developed for the library market, is now available. The new edition retails at $45, but see the new page (alongside) for further details and a special offer for personal orders, direct from the publisher. The cover of the new edition (above) features a grove of nikau […]

You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you.You have to go to them sometimes.  –  A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh 50mm; ISO 2000. 10 seconds at f16. Sodium vapour light balance    

 There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.  –  Rachel Carson, Silent Spring 85mm; ISO 1000. 30 seconds at f11. Sodium vapour light balance

What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more liveable.  –  Louise Nevelson (US photographer) 50mm; ISO 2000. 15 seconds at f11. Sodium vapour light balance  

   I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty.  –  Ellen Sturgis Hooper 50mm; ISO 2500. 30 seconds at f16. Flash    

There is no substitute for moonlight and kissing.  –  Barbara Cartland 85mm; ISO 2000. 70 seconds at f16. Flash

Artists are born kneeling; they fight to stand. Critics, by nature of the judgement seat, are born sitting.  –  Hortense Calisher (US novelist) [adapted] 50mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f16. Sodium vapour light balance

There is no such thing as the pursuit of happiness, but there is the discovery of joy.  –  Joyce Grenfell 28mm; ISO 2000. 192 seconds (over 3 mins) at f11

Those who wish to sing, always find a song.  –  Swedish proverb 50mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f5.6

 Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine. –  Buddha (attrib.) 85mm; ISO 1000. 63 seconds at f2.5. Sodium vapour light balance

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.  –  Oscar Wilde 85mm; ISO 2000. 1/400th sec at f9

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. –  Mark Twain 28mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f8

And the only sound that’s left / After the ambulances go Is Cinderella sweeping up / On Desolation Row.  –  Bob Dylan 28mm; ISO 2000. 68 seconds at f8

Approaching city lights, Manawatu. 7.06 pm, 6 August 2012 Fall seven times, stand up eight! –  Japanese proverb 85mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f9. Incandescent light balance      

Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away – Robert M. Hutchins 28mm; ISO 2000. 20 seconds at f5.6  

Nothing is ever the same twice because everything is always gone forever, and yet each moment has infinite photographic possibilities. – Michael Kenna  28mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f5.6  

28mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f8. Flash  

To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.  –  Joseph Addison Driving north in the early evening, I paused on a 2 km disused section of the old highway, quaint now for its narrowness and rustic one-lane bridge. The night was cold and moonless, with a constant […]

The illiteracy of the future will be ignorance not of reading or writing, but of photography. –      László Moholy-Nagy (Weimar photographer, 1926) Oh for a rising moon behind! But there was heavy overcast – and anyway, the moon was yet to rise. By the way, a big moon rising after dark is past […]

[Only the camera can express] the full majesty of the moment. –  Paul Leopold Rosenfeld Looking down on the tops of the persimmon. You can only do this on a very still night, as the slightest breeze blurs the detail. However, to get a really creative blur, you need a gusty evening – nothing in-between […]

I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.  –  Paul Simon (The Only Living Boy in New York) Still lifes by moonlight are formidable propositions because of the problems in seeing what you have, particularly with close framing and the shallow depth of field of a mild telephoto. This scene was […]

 I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.  –  Vincent van Gogh 28mm; ISO 2000. 66 seconds at f10

 At their best, photographs as symbols not only serve to help illuminate some of the darkness of the unknown, they also serve to lessen the fears that too often accompany the journeys from the known to the unknown. – Wynn Bullock 28mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f11

The moon develops the imagination, as chemicals develop photographic images. – Sheila Ballantyne 28mm; ISO 2000. 1/1.3rd second at f18. Flash