"Algebra applies to the clouds, the radiance of the star benefits the rose--no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who could ever calculate the path of a molecule? How do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by falling grains of sand? Who can understand the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abyss of being and the avalanches of creation?"
— Victor Hugo (Les Miserables)
Life's ebb and flow... good times and bad times come and go!
These are the journeys of a thoughtful mind with an eye for beauty, through the landscapes of New Zealand, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and the world with trusty camera in hand.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Ebb & Flow : Come & Go
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The Bonfire of Dusk
"Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life."
— Tom Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities)
To my father... just a boy who died young!
Saturday, February 25, 2012
The City of Brotherly Love
"I never use a big word when a diminutive word would suffice."
— Phillies coach Pete Mackanin
Thus ends this series of some of my favourite cities...
Cityscape Series #3 - Philadelphia, USA
Friday, February 24, 2012
Cast Up By The Storm
"So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?"
— Hunter S. Thompson
I'm liking this Cinemascope letterbox format...
Cinemascope Series #3
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Rich Evening Light
"Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
"you owe me."
Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky."
— Hafiz of Shiraz
Cinemascope Series #2
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Wind Blown Coast
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
From Sea Fever by John Masefield (Sea Fever: Selected Poems)
Cinemascope Series #1
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Learning To Fly
"The Guide says there is an art to flying", said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
— Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe, and Everything)
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Pacific's Triple Star
God of Nations at Thy feet,
In the bonds of love we meet,
Hear our voices, we entreat,
God defend our free land.
Guard Pacific's triple star
From the shafts of strife and war,
Make her praises heard afar,
God defend New Zealand.
E Ihowā Atua,
O ngā iwi mātou rā
Āta whakarangona;
Me aroha noa
Kia hua ko te pai;
Kia tau tō atawhai;
Manaakitia mai
Aotearoa
- The New Zealand National Anthem (Thomas Bracken 1870's)
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Reflections of Sunset
"Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket."
— Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale)
Looking east at sunset...
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Pink Skies Over The City
"I recall one particular sunset. It lent an ember to my bicycle hell. Overhead, above the black music of telegraph wires, a number of long, dark-violet clouds lined with flamingo pink hung motionless in a fan-shaped arrangement; the whole thing was like some prodigious ovation in terms of color and form! It was dying, however, and everything else was darkening, too; but just above the horizon, in a lucid, turquoise space, beneath a black stratus, the eye found a vista that only a fool could mistake for the square parts of this or any other sunset. It occupied a very small sector of the enormous sky and had the peculiar neatness of something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. There it lay in wait, a brilliant convolutions, anachronistic in their creaminess and extremely remote; remote but perfect in every detail; fantastically reduced but faultlessly shaped; my marvelous tomorrow ready to be delivered to me."
— Vladimir Nabokov
Perfect pink skies over the Sydney cityscape...
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Sunset Thirty Four
"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all."
— John Cage
I never tire of watching the sun set over the ocean...
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Sunset Thirty Four
"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all."
— John Cage
I never tire of watching the sun set over the ocean...
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Breeze On Tranquil Waters
"My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring and carried aloft on the wings of the breeze."
— Anne Brontë
By the silent stream a breeze stirs my soul...
Friday, February 10, 2012
Steady As A Rock
"On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock."
— Thomas Jefferson
Meanwhile on a coast lapped by the Tasman Sea...
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Living In The Rainbow Vale
"Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live."
— Nora Roberts
* Pentax K20D + Pentax 18-55mm Lens - 3 Shot HDR
Selected images are available high res and unframed at RedBubble
Living In The Rainbow Vale
"Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live."
— Nora Roberts
* Pentax K20D + Pentax 18-55mm Lens - 3 Shot HDR
Selected images are available high res and unframed at RedBubble
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Walking Into A Dream
"I was born to catch dragons in their dens
And pick flowers
To tell tales and laugh away the morning
To drift and dream like a lazy stream
And walk barefoot across sunshine days."
— James Kavanaugh (Sunshine Days and Foggy Nights)
* Pentax K20D + Pentax 18-55mm Lens - 1 Shot
Selected images are available high res and unframed at RedBubble
Monday, February 6, 2012
Life On The Edge
"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."
— Kurt Vonnegut
* Pentax K20D + Pentax 18-55mm Lens - 1 Shot HDR
Selected images are available high res and unframed at RedBubble
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Island Drift
"In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream- Lingering in the golden gleam- Life, what is it but a dream?"
— Lewis Carroll (Through The Looking Glass)
* Pentax K20D + Pentax 18-55mm Lens - 3 Shot HDR
Selected images are available high res and unframed at RedBubble
Friday, February 3, 2012
Forever Beach
"As summer neared, as the evening lengthened there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool, imaginations of the strangest kind- of flesh turned to atoms which drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their hearts, of outwardly the scattered parts of the vision within. In those mirrors, the minds of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in which cloud forever and shadows form, dreams persisted; and it was impossible to resist the strange intimation which every gull, flower, tree, man and woman, and the white earth itself seemed to declare (but if you questioned at once to withdraw) that good triumph, happiness prevails, order rules, or to resist the extra ordinary stimulus to range hither and thither in search of some absolute good, some crystal of intensity remote from the known pleasures and familiar virtues, something alien to the processes of domestic life, single, hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand which would render the possessor secure. Moreover softened and acquiescent, the spring with their bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloud about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows and fights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her knowledge of the sorrows of mankind."
— Virginia Woolf
* Pentax K20D + Pentax 18-55mm Lens - 3 Shot HDR
Selected images are available high res and unframed at RedBubble
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Clouds Over Silent Water
“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
“إن التصنيف حاجة ضرورية بالنسبة للبشر ، لكنه يصبح حالة مرَضية عندما يجري النظر إلى الفئة المصنفة نظرة تقريرية قاطعة ، الأمر الذي يمنع الناس من التفكير في ضبابية الحدود الموضوعة بين الناس والمجتمعات ، خلا عن إعادة النظر في تقسيم الناس إلى فئات”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
“Things always become obvious after the fact”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
* Pentax K20D + Pentax 18-55mm Lens - Single Shot
Selected images are available high res and unframed at RedBubble
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Walking In Awe
"Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
* Pentax K20D + Pentax 18-55mm Lens - Single Shot
Selected images are available high res and unframed at RedBubble