I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. – Joseph Campbell 85mm; ISO 1000. 5 seconds at f11. Flash  

I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored. ― Bill Bryson, Lost Continent: Travels In Small-Town America 85mm; ISO 2000. 15 seconds at f16. Sodium vapour light […]

 Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it … Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.  –  Joshua Foer 28mm; ISO 2000. 1/2 sec at f5.6. Sodium vapour light balance

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.  –  Theodore Roethke 50mm; ISO 2000. 15 seconds at f9. Incandescent light balance; flash  

Still round the corner there may wait / A new road or a secret gate And though I oft have passed them by / A day will come at last when I Shall take the hidden paths that run / West of the Moon, East of the Sun.                                                                                                             – J.R.R. Tolkien 85mm; ISO 2000. […]

For the joy of the angels lies only in obedience to God’s will, and with equal joy they would lift a Lazarus in his rags to Abraham’s bosom, or be a chariot of fire to carry an Elijah home.  –  John Newton 28mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f13

Miracles occur, / If you dare to call those spasmodic / Tricks of radiance miracles. / The wait’s begun again, / The long wait for the angel, / For that rare, random descent. – Sylvia Plath 50mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f9. Incandescent light balance

 Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift. – Albert Einstein 85mm, ISO 2000. 1 second at f8. Sodium vapour light balance

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

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 […]

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  

There is no duty we so much underestimate as the duty of being happy. Being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.   –  Robert L. Stevenson 85mm, ISO 2000. 1 sec at f16. Flash

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 […]