Life is a badly edited film.  –  Fernando Trueba This was taken without using a tripod or cable release – just holding the camera open on B, on a guard rail on the Cook Strait ferry, has done the trick. The cloud is lit by moonlight, the lower part of the image must be the motorway the […]

Blend a little foolishness with your wisdom: it’s nice to be silly at the right moment. –  Horace 28mm, ISO 2000. 30 secs at f8. Flash  

Health is the greatest gift; Contentment the greatest wealth; Faithfulness the best relationship.  –  Buddha 28mm, ISO 2000. 123 secs at f22. Flash

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.  –  William Faulkner The epitome of the lonely grave, this one has extensive seafront views. Cecil Addison died of Tb, aged 16, on Christmas Eve 1924, and here lies in splendid isolation, some 800 m from the old homestead at Te Hapu. From numerous technical frustrations this test frame […]

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.

If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.  –  Regina Brett, at 90 85mm, ISO 2000. 10 secs at f1.4

 When we are unable to find tranquillity within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.  –  de La Rochefoucauld 85mm, ISO 2000. 4 secs at f2. 5000 deg K

The real difference between people is energy. –  Thomas Fuller 85mm, ISO 2000. 30 seconds at f7.1

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

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 […]

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 […]

No state of affairs is ever perfect. –  Horace On a mild spring evening a slip of a moon comes down the starry sky to a calm sea. What a marvellous programme! A bench seat was provided but there was no admission charge,  applause or intermission – and no commercials. Truth be told though, I […]

One forgives as much as one loves. –  La Rochefoucauld The old water reservoir at Nelson is a peaceful place for pic-spotting by the moonlight photographer, in part because access to it is through a motor camp. It may be needless to say, but when you’re out at night it’s important to feel safe so […]

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 […]

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. –  Aesop Last full moon I spent many happy hours over several evenings tackling the budding magnolia next door. This one worked better at f5.6 than at f16, to my surprise, but with f16 needing nearly 5 minutes the risk of a breeze was […]

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 […]

Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody. –  Samuel Pepys, Diary 1665 “24mm”, ISO 800. 60 seconds at f2  

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

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 […]

It is only with the heart that one can see properly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. –  Antoine de St Exupery Although my heart is in this place, in this case I saw by ear, as the swans weren’t visible by moonlight. However they were very audible, and other wetland birdlife also […]

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise. –  Tacitus You do not have the whole evening to shoot the crescent moon – it retires early. While it’s going, though, the crescent obliges the moonlight photographer on western coasts with some great reflections. The actual light from a crescent appears to be […]

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view; While all the women came and went, their foot-servants too.  – Bob Dylan The surreal song lyric [misquoted on the web] fits this enigmatic view from the waterfront pavement at Kaikoura, in the South Island. The scale is ambiguous and the light unusual, but at least more […]