Counting quiet notes

Counting quiet notes. 2019.

Here the birds feel less like wildlife and more like marks on a score. The power lines become staves, stretched across a big empty field of colour, and each tiny silhouette reads as a note held in the air. The sky is doing most of the emotional work, shifting gently from pink to mauve so the scene stays calm rather than dramatic.

The photograph sits somewhere between landscape and abstraction. It is about spacing, counting, and pause, the way a group can feel both connected and separate at the same time. Nothing much is happening, yet the eye keeps moving along the wire, quietly aware of the gaps and clusters, listening for a song that never quite starts.

200 mm • f/2.8 • 1/4000 sec, ISO 64

Wetland cross section

Wetland cross section. 2020.

The image is really about how the coast arranges itself into bands. Deep water, surf, scrub, mudflat, each layer has its own colour and texture, stacked like a cross section of the shoreline. Seen from above, that everyday edge between land and sea starts to feel more like a painting, or a diagram, than a literal place.

All the little pools and dark patches in the lower half read as marks on a canvas as much as traces of tides and seasons. It is an environmental picture, but instead of pointing to a single subject, it lets the viewer drift along the frame and notice how many different systems are sharing this narrow strip of ground.

8.8 mm • f/2.8 • 1/2500 sec • ISO 100

Crossroads in motion

Crossroads in motion. 2011.

All the bright lines here are really just people passing through a shared space for a few seconds. The long exposure turns individual cars into streams of colour, drawing a map of how movement cuts across the frozen grid of the streets. Warm orange trails run over the cold blue and white of the snow, so the whole scene becomes a diagram of heat and motion sitting inside a quiet winter night.

The elevated viewpoint is important. From above, the intersection feels less like everyday traffic and more like a nervous system, signals firing in every direction. It is about that feeling of being one small traveller inside a much bigger pattern, where every turn of the wheel leaves a temporary mark that disappears as quickly as it appears.

130 mm • f/25 • 25 sec • ISO 200

As stars pass

As stars pass. 2013.

The scene is really about two versions of time sitting on top of each other. Down low, the river is all movement and noise, tumbling over stones, constantly rearranging the foreground. Up above, time stretches into slow arcs of light, each star trail a line drawn by the planet turning. The long exposure lets both exist in the same frame, the water turned to mist and the sky to handwriting.

The small string of house lights on the left is important, a reminder that people are tucked into this valley, sleeping while the river and sky keep working. The photograph is meant to feel like a pause taken on a long journey, standing alone by the water, aware of your own breath and the sheer amount of time flowing past in every direction.

24 mm • f/2.0 • 461 sec • ISO 100

Drift between bridges

Drift between bridges. 2012.

What holds this scene together for me is the sense of the city breathing slowly. The canal is almost still, a dark strip of glass lined with old houseboats and trees losing their last autumn leaves. Only the boat refuses to stay put, smearing into a soft shape of light and cream as it moves through the exposure.

The photograph leans into that contrast between permanence and passing. Buildings and bridges feel fixed and watchful, while the boat becomes memory, already half gone by the time you register it. It is about how nights in a city like Amsterdam are rarely truly quiet, yet they still offer these pockets of calm where movement becomes a gentle trace rather than a disruption.

24 mm • f/2.8 • 1 sec, ISO 100

Murmur

Murmur. 2024.

The scene felt like the sky had been shaken, and all these tiny black notes were spilling across it. The colour is calm and soft, a slow gradient from blue into warm pink, but the birds are restless, constantly rearranging themselves into new patterns that never quite settle.

What interests me here is that tension between noise and quiet. From a distance the flock becomes almost a texture, like film grain or static, yet each mark is a living thing deciding where to go next. The photograph holds that brief overlap, when the chaos of movement reads as something ordered, a kind of improvised constellation written over the last light of the day.

70 mm • f/3.2 • 1/500 sec, ISO 400

After hours at the park

After hours at the park. 2020.

I was interested in how the park changes once the skaters go home and the lights are left to perform by themselves. The red wash over the ramps feels almost theatrical, spilling across the concrete like a stage light, while the steel arch throws out hard white starbursts toward the water. With no people around, the shapes of the park become the main characters, all sharp planes and quiet lines, with the soft line of the bay and distant city lights as a backdrop. It turns a space built for noise and movement into something calm and slightly surreal, like a set waiting for the next scene to begin.

24 mm • f/5.6 • 8 sec, ISO 64

Waiting to open

Waiting to open. 2023.

I liked how this little strip of sky ended up squeezed between two bands of building, the red canopy pressing down and the closed doors holding the bottom edge. Everything is shut, sealed, waiting for business that has not started yet. The geometry is almost too neat, rectangles stacked on rectangles, but the soft blue and the small cloud stop it from feeling completely rigid. It sits in that familiar nowhere of light-industrial estates, where colour and design are trying their best to dress up a place that is really about storage and routine. The picture is less about the building itself and more about that quiet pause before activity, when the doors are still down and the day has not quite begun.

35 mm • f/5.6 • 1/160 sec, ISO 200

Accordion man

Accordion man. 2011.

There is nothing grand going on here, just a man on a plastic chair holding an old accordion together with his hands and his grin. He sits pressed up against the city, metal shutter to one side and stone wall to the other, turning a tight little space into a stage. I was drawn to the mix of things that do not quite match, the turquoise chair, polished shoes, patterned shirt, the instrument faded from years of use. His smile does most of the work, cutting through the hard surfaces and traffic noise. The picture is less about performance and more about a life spent meeting strangers one song at a time, a small act of joy holding its ground on the pavement.

85 mm • f/5.6 • 1/250 sec, ISO 250

Somewhere in the middle

Somewhere in the middle. 2013.

A strip of red roof and brick rooms sits low in the frame while the sky takes almost everything else, a big empty sweep of blue that makes the motel feel even more remote. Sun-bleached plastic chairs wait outside each door like stand-ins for people who have already moved on, leaving only their shape behind. I was thinking about the in-between parts of travel, the towns you pass through and forget, and how these small, repeated units of room and door and chair hold so many brief lives. The scene is bright and cheerful on the surface, but the scale tips toward loneliness, a thin line of human shelter holding its ground under a sky that does not really notice it.

24 mm • f/1.8 • 1/8000 sec, ISO 100

Signal before the storm

Signal before the storm. 2020.

A thin metal antenna reaches up into a sky that is already slipping from soft pink into grey, trying to hold a signal while the weather rolls in. The dark cloud carries most of the weight, both visually and emotionally, drifting low and heavy across all that empty colour, while the structure below looks fragile and makeshift by comparison. It is a small suburban moment, but it hints at bigger themes, the way our attempts to connect feel temporary beside the slow, indifferent movement of the sky, and how a single shape at the edge of a frame can stand in for a whole street of quiet backyards waiting for rain.

70 mm • f/5.6 • 1/5 sec, ISO 400

City reflections 2

City reflections 2. 2022.

A tower of glass turns into moving water, the neighbouring building stretched and warped into currents that run the full height of the frame. Hard architecture starts to behave like something fluid, all ripples and tide marks, while the dark window panels sit inside the chaos like skipped beats. The picture leans into that tension between order and distortion, using the rigid grid of the facade as a kind of staff for the reflected “music” to play across. It is about how cities constantly redraw themselves in their own surfaces, and how a simple shift in angle can turn a familiar office block into an abstract field of colour, rhythm and light.

70 mm • f/10 • 1/250 sec, ISO 125

Corrugated light

Corrugated light. 2024.

A single floodlight becomes the main character, a sharp white rectangle pressed against a soft, unsettled sky. Below it, the corrugated wall breaks into bands of colour and texture, like a hard edged painting that has slipped into the real world. The picture sits at that meeting point between utility and abstraction, where something as ordinary as a shed and a security light turns into a study of rhythm, colour and atmosphere. It is less about the building itself and more about how small, man made structures try to hold their own under the weight of the weather above them.

50 mm • f/13 • 1/200 sec, ISO 500

Light over the stacks

Light over the stacks. 2021.

Containers pile up like oversized building blocks, solid and heavy, while the stadium light floats above them like a thin metal flower against the sky. Most of the frame is empty blue, so the colour bands of orange and navy feel almost temporary, as if they could be rearranged overnight and the scene would change completely. The white dome just peeking in on the right softens the industrial edges, giving the composition a small curve to lean on. It is a simple corner of the Port Melbourne yards, held at that quiet hour when work has paused and the light makes even freight and floodlights feel deliberate and carefully placed.

70 mm • f/5.6 • 1/400 sec, ISO 64

Silent ascent

Silent ascent. 2013.

The mountain rises like a blade, cutting straight into the sky while the lower ridgelines tumble away in textured steps. Fine cloud streaks echo the shape of the summit, so the whole scene feels like it is still moving upward even in a frozen moment. Harsh light carves detail into the snow and rock, showing every crease in the face of the range. It holds that feeling from the end of a long hike near Pokhara, when exhaustion drops away for a second and all that is left is thin air, silence, and the sense that the landscape has been watching people come and go for far longer than any trail has existed.

24 mm • f/2.0 • 1/8000 sec, ISO 100

Brutalist Crown

Brutalist Crown. 2020.

Concrete is pushed toward the sky until it starts to feel ceremonial, the ribs of the structure meeting in a sharp point like a steeple. Midday light carves hard shadows into the columns, so every joint and seam reads as a drawing on the surface. The blue above is empty and pure, giving the weight of the building something clean to lean against. It sits between industrial and sacred, a small study in how even the most utilitarian architecture can take on the posture of a monument when you stand close and look up.

16mm • 1/1000 sec, ISO 80

Spaces between

Spaces between. 2023.

This photograph treats the gap between buildings as the main subject, a thin slice of sky trapped inside architecture. The facades lean inward, one cool and metallic, the other textured and slightly warmer, guiding the eye toward the soft cloud cover overhead. A few lit windows on the right hint at life inside the grid, small pockets of warmth against the rigid symmetry. It is a study in compression and scale, where the city briefly feels like a canyon and the sky is reduced to a quiet, breathing line of light.

16 mm • f/5.6 • 1/200 sec, ISO 640

Midnight suburbia

Midnight suburbia. 2017.

A plain back fence becomes a threshold between the private yard and the wider suburb, held in a soft wash of sports field light that feels too theatrical for such an ordinary place. Yucca spikes crowd the foreground, the dark timber fence cuts a horizontal line through the scene, and beyond it the roofs and floodlights sit in a pale halo that bleeds into the blue night sky. The long exposure smooths the air and light into gradients rather than details, turning the little patch of grass into a kind of stage, empty but expectant. It circles around that feeling of being awake later than everyone else, aware of how strange and still your own street can look when most of the suburb has gone quiet.

24 mm • f/5.6 • 15 sec, ISO 100

A quite sky

Small distance. 2022.

Most of the scene is given over to sky, with the plane reduced to a small moving mark against a broad grey field. The textured cloud at the bottom reads almost like surf or distant hills, a low band of weight beneath a wide empty space. Placing the aircraft high and off centre leans into scale and solitude, so the plane feels both fragile and determined as it cuts through the weather. It becomes less about aviation and more about the feeling of being in transit, suspended between places, a quiet reminder of how small we are inside the larger weather of the world.

50 mm • f/16 • 1/320 sec, ISO 180

City Reflections 1

Before the rain. 2021.

This frame is about how strict order always contains small acts of disobedience. The building presents itself as a clean grid of blue glass and pale structure, every line stacked and aligned, yet here and there a balcony recesses a little deeper or a window panel sits ajar, creating tiny disruptions in the rhythm. By filling the frame with the facade and stripping away street context, the tower becomes more like a drawing than a building, an exercise in repetition where the few irregular shapes feel almost human. The cool colour palette keeps everything calm and distant, while those slight deviations suggest the lives and decisions happening just out of sight behind the glass.

145 mm • f/5.6 • 1/100 sec, ISO 64