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

What’s gone and what’s past help, should be past grief.  –  William Shakespeare 50mm, ISO 2000. 2.5 secs at f4  

  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  

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  

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 […]

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

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 in doubt, just take the next small step.  –  Regina Brett, at 90 28mm, ISO 2000. 30 secs at f10. Incandescent light balance  

 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 future is purchased by the present.  –  Samuel Johnson 28mm, ISO 2500. 30 secs at f10

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

Through the friendly silence of the soundless moonlight. – Virgil 50mm, ISO 500. 30 seconds at f16. Flash

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking. – Samuel Johnson 50mm, ISO 2000. 13 seconds at f8. Flash

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

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]