2727 Wet evening, Whangarei Harbour. 5.24pm, 25 May 2013 On a sodden summer’s day here in Taranaki I’ve been looking through my yearly folders for fitting material. This high-tide scene from Mcleod’s Bay, on the northern shores of Whangarei Harbour, takes in the blue of twilight and the clean, bright highlights of torchlight. I was aiming […]

Mt Moturoa, New Plymouth. 7.08 pm, 21 April 2013 Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.  –  Ovid 28mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f16. Incandescent light balance

  Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.  –  Napoleon Bonaparte 50mm; ISO 2500. 30 seconds at f22. Flash; sodium vapour light balance

 You should listen to your heart, and not the voices in your head.  –  Marge Simpson 50mm; ISO 2000. 2 seconds at f5.6. Sodium vapour light balance  

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand / In blue of larkspur,                            blue of Mary’s colour / Sovegna vos  –  T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday IV 85mm; ISO 2000. 4 seconds at f9. Sodium vapour light balance  

There are no eyes here / In this valley of dying stars / In this hollow valley /                This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms  –  T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men 85mm; ISO 500. 30 seconds at f16. Incandescent light balance    

 In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.  –  Alfred Stieglitz 85mm; ISO 2000. 25 seconds at f8. Incandescent

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize that prisoner was you.  –  Lewis B. Smedes 85mm; ISO 500. 15 seconds at f16. Incandescent light balance

Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance.  –  John Petit-Senn 28mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f11. Incandescent light balance

More important than the quest for certainty is the quest for clarity  –  Francois Gautier 50mm; ISO 2000. 10 seconds at f4                

 Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.  – Dalai Lama 50mm; ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f8. Flash; incandescent light balance  

Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy – Milton Erickson 50mm; ISO 2000. 80 seconds at f11. Incandescent light balance        

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  

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

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  

 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

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

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

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      

[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 see magic in the quiet light of dusk.  –  John  Sexton 85mm; ISO 250. 30 seconds at f16. Incandescent light balance