Prompt: "You are a photographer, physicist, and are well acquainted with the history of art, particularly abstract art in the style of Kandinsky, Kupka, and Hilma af Klint. You also have a penchant for metaphysical and philosophical musings in the style of Jorge Luis Borges. Write a paragraph-length description of what this image looks like, not what it is."
Sunday, June 01, 2025
Palimpsest of Matter
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Mountain is a Mountain
- Joan Halifax (1942 - )
The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through
Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom
Friday, May 30, 2025
Subliminal Worlds
- Carlos Castaneda (1925 - 1998)
The Active Side of Infinity
Thursday, May 29, 2025
Edges of Dreams
"This is where we start.
We are creatures of words...
- Whiti Hereaka (1978 - )
Prologue, Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Beyond Thought
- Clarice Lispector (1920 - 1977)
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Liminal Beauty
but what you see. It is only necessary
to behold the least fact or phenomenon,
however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth
aside from our habitual path or routine,
to be overcome, enchanted by its
beauty and significance."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Monday, May 26, 2025
Surface of the Psyche
To dream profoundly, one must
dream with substances.
Only matter can become charged with
multiple impressions and feelings.
on the surface of the psyche."
- Gaston Bachelard (1884 - 1962)
The Poetics of Space
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Photographs-Otherwise-Not-Taken, Taken
- Julian Barbour (1937 - )
The End of Time
Note. The admittedly busy title of this blog post obviously begs an explanation. I'll start by saying that it is inspired by a short email exchange I recently had with a photo buddy of mine (the Zen-master, Paul Cotter). In reply to Paul's kind comments about my recent "travelogue images," I countered with the suggestion that my favorite images from the trip are/may-be those I took with my iPhone and not my 21L-sling-bag's-worth of "pro" gear (the details of which hardly matter)! While I am not (entirely) convinced of the veracity of my claim (and others may differ), I have zero doubt that my iPhone gifted me many images that I will cherish in the years to come precisely because these are photographs I would otherwise have not taken! Some examples - click to see full-size:
A view from inside the Novotel Auckland Airport
while my wife was busy getting us checked in
Frosted window inside restroom at the
Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park Visitor Centre
Upside down view of one of the ceilings at the
Nadi International Airport in Fiji
A snapshot view of urban geometry while waiting
for my wife to pay the parking meter
A 5 sec exposure of a part of our boat ride to Milford Sound,
stabilized by my iPhone's computational photography algorithms
I have dozens more of these "Photographs-Otherwise-Not-Taken, Taken" images, all of which share this one salient pattern: had I not used my iPhone to capture them (embarrassingly easily by, literally, framing and tapping, and without any of what my wife describes as "glacier-paced compositional machinations"), they would all have been but fleeting moments doomed to be lost in the mists of memory and time.
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Aoraki
As ever mingled with heroic dust,
Steer’d Britain’s oak into a world unknown,
And in his country’s glory sought his own,
Wherever he found man, to nature true,
The rights of man were sacred in his view"
- William Cowper (1731 - 1800)
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Formless Void
over into the formless void
of the unlimited."
- Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)













