As Many Photographers Will Tell You,

light can make or break a photograph,

so what happens when there is little light? Kenji Ishikawa can tell you, the 74-year old Japanese photographer has been travelling the world for the last 35 years taking photographs with one of the most minimal forms of light: moonlight, above “Iguazu Falls and Rainbows,” taken in Argentina by Kenji Ishikawa,

  “Jomon cedar” taken on Yakushima island, as you probably know, moonlight is mostly sunlight that’s reflected off the lunar surface, so it varies greatly depending on the phase of the moon,

 “Monument Valley” taken in the United States, 

 put differently, the magnitude of the full Moon is only about 1/380,000 that of the Sun, above  “Cape and Wave” shot in Saipan,

 Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, rather than the blue-lit sky of day, Ishikawa’s images show a dark blue seems to connect the stars and skies with the trees and bodies of water of our planet, Ishikawa calls this gekkouyoku (月光浴) meaning literally “bathing in moonlight.”

taken at Itoshima, Fukuoka, what a neat idea, I had never given a thought to moonlight photography before, so the next time we are somewhere that looks like it could make a pleasing photograph, I will be lurking around in the moonlight with my trusty tripod!