With your silhouette when the sunlight dims, into your eyes when the moonlight swims, and your matchbook songs and gypsy hymns: Who among them would try to impress you? –  Bob Dylan (Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands) 85mm, ISO 2000. 5 secs at f11

… all our senses will be purified, and there will be nothing to criticize and no unhappy memories.  –  Srila Narayana Maharaja 28mm, ISO 2000. 2.5 secs at f2.8  

Tomorrow will be the same, but not as this is.  –  Colin McCahon “60mm”, ISO 125. 1 second at f2.8. Tungsten light balance  

When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands.  – Gandhi 50mm, ISO 2000. 15 secs at f11  

A fool sees a tree, by moonlight. 11.49pm, 10 January 2012  A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.  – William Blake 28mm, ISO 2000. 30 secs at f13. Flash

Summer’s night, Westhaven Inlet. 11.17pm, 10 January 2012 Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change.  –  Katherine Mansfield 50mm, ISO 2000. 170 secs at f22. Flash.

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.  –  St Augustine  28mm, ISO 2000. 30 secs at f11

Start every day with a smile and get it over with.  –  W.C. Field 85mm, ISO 2000. 1/13th sec at f7.1. Flash, 10000 deg K  

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction. –  J.F. Kennedy 28mm, ISO 2000. 30 secs at f8. Flash

It is madness for sheep to talk peace with a wolf. –  Thomas Fuller 85mm, ISO 2000. 10 secs at f4.5

To have made a beginning is half of the business; dare to be wise  –  Horace 85mm, ISO 2000. 30 seconds @ f11

Life is made up of marble and mud. –  Nathaniel Hawthorne It’s surprising what you find close to home when you can’t venture far. Apart from their starriness, this scene matches with the previous one, Marahau before moonrise, in one  sense: use of f4. However their shutter times demonstrate how far apart light levels can […]

Somehow to capture the constantly evanescent quality of existence. – Tennessee Williams, on his goal in writing It can be a pain to wait for the moonrise on those nights following full moon – although you do get some quality time with undimmed stars and the odd cloud capture. Eventually the eastern horizon lightens and […]

Good sense travels on well worn paths; genius never. –  Cesar Lombroso The skies were clear but the wind was howling as I set up on the cycleway, across the way from the fertiliser works near Napier. Any shot that I failed to shelter from the windgusts was useless, so I hovered as close to […]

Never confuse activity with action. –  F. Scott Fitzgerald 28mm, ISO 2000. 2.5 seconds at f2.8. Incandescent light balance, flash

Never in his life could an idiot do such foolish things as are sometimes done by nations governed by hundreds of talented people. –  Benito Perez Galdos 28mm, ISO 2000. 2 minutes at f16. Incandescent light balance.

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state. We must be doing something to be happy.  – William Hazlitt 85mm, ISO 2000. 3 seconds at f2. Incandescent light balance.

Suburban twilight and new moon. 5.42 pm, 4 July 2011 Effort appears to be the main art of living. –  Harold Nicolson 28mm, ISO 100. 5 seconds at f22. Incandescent light balance.

[The object of art is] to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment. –                    Tennessee Williams The trick with any arc of headlights is to minimise the full-on glare of the lights, something likely to occur at some point in your frame. Here in the second frame from a moonlight sequence you see a short space […]

I don’t sing because I’m happy. I’m happy because I sing. – William James Ratapiko is a small hydro lake near the edge of the Taranaki ring plain, about 40 minutes northeast of New Plymouth, in a quiet country district. Quiet on a winter’s evening at least, as in season Ratapiko is popular for boating […]

The heaventree of stars hung with humid night-blue fruit. –  James Joyce Night-blue signals tungsten film! It was not something I usually shot with, but in my younger days I used whatever film was affordable. To get balanced colour in daylight you had to apply corrective filters, but none were used here, so the blues […]

The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension between opposites. –  Carl Jung “Contra nuit” adapts the French term contra jour, meaning against-the-light effects, to this special application by full moon. I’ve tried it here from the safety of the broad shadow of a poplar, as […]

When inspiration arrives I want it to find me working. –  Pablo Picasso “Some highway” means that I do not know exactly where this was taken. On Easter holiday near Tongariro National Park (central North Island), we were off for a drive-about, on the night before full moon. Here we might be on the Turangi […]

Low-flying cloud on the outskirts of New Plymouth accompanies this uncommon perspective from a high point near Barrett Domain. Running the beam over this attractive specimen from a steep ridge nearby, I spotted another outline in the background. Although deceased, the second tree adds depth, twisting the perspective further – mostly we look up at […]

North Taranaki this week has been clear and mild for night photography by the  crescent moon. These slender new moons might give only the feeblest of light but if you can see your shadow by them then there is enough for moonlight photography! Nature also provides some magnifiers for moonlight, the best being its reflection […]