Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week. –  Spanish proverb 85mm; ISO 640. 8 seconds at f5.6. Sodium vapour light balance

The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote. – Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby 28mm; ISO 1000. 15 seconds at f8. Light balance 2500 deg K  

 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

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

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

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world, and exiles me from it.  –  Ursula K. Le Guin 28mm, ISO 2000. 1 sec at f11. Flash  

The world to me is a dream and the people in it are sleepers. I have known a few instances of intensity but that is all.  – Katherine Mansfield 28mm, ISO 2000. 6 secs at f2.8  

I confess that the head gardener has long asked for a moonlight photo of these louts, here at home. On the wrong side of a trellis, the artichokes are shaded from the full moon until after midnight; they’re also exposed to the sickly orange of streetlights. To fix the first problem I togged up after […]

Backlit by moonlight. 2.47 am, 11 November 2011 Most of us swim in the ocean of the commonplace. –  Pio Baroja Although I’m not really satisfied with this, returning for another attempt wouldn’t deliver the same magic I first found here. While commonplace as to foliage, the light on this scene was striking, being an […]

Friendship is a sheltering tree. –  S.T. Coleridge Peering through a suburban cabbage tree involved an awkward set-up on sloping ground; every slight adjustment of the tripod also changed the ponga ferns relative to the foreground. I was however nicely sheltered from a frigid gale. I’ve used a conventional depth of field method known as […]

Experience is the comb that nature gives us when we are bald.  –  Anon Another split focus, single frame experiment; the hairdresser’s quote is suggested by the full-frontal flash on the flower stalks. For the rest of the exposure the lens barrel has been swiftly rotated, moving the focus closer to infinity. This gives reasonable […]

  Fern and farm, autumn night. 8.58pm, 19 May 2011 Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance. –  Samuel Johnson Taranaki is so wet that ferns thrive even out on their own, as here on farmland close to town. The extra lighting is from a penlight, and far more subtle than in […]

  There are no innocent desires. –  Luis Bunuel (attrib.) This well lit figure stands by a pond fringed with planted natives. The pond is also fringed by the suburbs; it’s on a reserve within walking distance of home, one which is a pleasure to reach without having to take the car. There is plenty […]

  Plan for the future because that’s where you are going to spend the rest of your life. –  Mark Twain But why plan for the future when it’s already here? While waiting for a late moonrise I saw this spectacle, looming above the top floor of a parking building. Flash-assisted in deep twilight, the […]

Time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked. –  Noel Coward Here you see no ships nor port, but a curious effect of some tricky experimentation. Changing the focus manually during exposure gives two planes of focus! For technical reasons this works best on telephoto, using flash before a time […]

The truth is more important than the facts. –  Frank Lloyd Wright I clambered up a cutting for this welcome perspective, then waited a while for a car to complete the picture, a 5 min 35 sec exposure. The car is actually a police car looking for me. A strange vehicle has been reported down […]

Too much light is like too much darkness: you cannot see. –  Octavio Paz Mt Taranaki and the Southern Cross. I’d had this viewpoint in mind for sometime, as it has a convenient carpark and a sweeping bend. Much depends on car speed, headlight direction and high or low beam – plus ISO choice and […]

The thing always happens that you really believe in, and the belief in a thing makes it happen. –  Frank Lloyd Wright Using the smallest aperture on the bridge I got both the near bones and the distant peak into sharp focus with a telephoto lens. A lower ISO was needed to extend the exposure […]

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. –  Francis Bacon Contrary to Bacon, as a night photographer my hopes rise at supper. The new moon is not visible until the sky darkens, well after sunset. This moon always needs a supporting cast, to add both human scale and pictorial interest; here […]