People who inspire me: Steve Jobs

I've long admired Steve Jobs, not just because he built one of the world's great companies, but because his ideas have influenced the way I think. I use Apple products every day, especially my MacBook Pro and iPhone, and I continue to be impressed by how intuitive, elegant and thoughtfully designed they are. Jobs understood that great technology isn't just about powerful features—it's about creating products that people genuinely enjoy using.

One of the lessons I value most from Steve Jobs is the power of focus. He believed that saying "no" to hundreds of good ideas was often more important than saying "yes" to a few great ones. In a world full of distractions, that's a principle I try to keep coming back to. I also admire his relentless pursuit of simplicity. He showed that making something simple is often much harder than making it complicated, and that great design begins with understanding the user's experience.

His life story is inspiring in its own right. Being forced out of the company he founded could have been the end of the story, but instead it became the beginning of one of the greatest comebacks in business history. He returned to Apple, transformed it from a struggling company into one of the most valuable businesses on Earth, and changed the way millions of people interact with technology. His vision, resilience and insistence on excellence continue to inspire me.

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I loved this biography about Steve jobs which I read in 2012.

Favourite quotes

• Don’t just live a life; build one.
• None of us are as creative as all of us.
• I’d rather be a Pirate than join the Navy.
• Do not try to do everything. Do one thing well.
• Follow your heart, but check it with your head.
• Innovation means saying ‘no’ to a thousand things.
• If you’re afraid of failing you won’t get very far.
• It isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want.
• Focus does not mean saying yes, it means saying no.
• Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.
• It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple.
• Our job is to read things that are not yet on the page.
• I hate the way people use PowerPoints instead of thinking.
• Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.
• Focus and simplicity…once you get there, you can move mountains.
• Don’t just follow your passion but something larger than yourself.
• If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution.
• Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
• Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday.
• The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
• Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
• If you live each day as it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.
• Quality is much better than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.
• Listen to me. We’re here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise why even be here?
• Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
• You cannot mandate productivity, you must provide the tools to let people become their best.
• You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.
• Do you want to sell sugar water all your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?
• It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much.
• If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.
• It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.
• The greatest thing is when you do put your heart and soul into something over an extended period of time, and it is worth it.
• Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.
• What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
• Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful … that’s what matters to me.
• That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.
• You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to sell it.
• We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.
• Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.
• You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
• Quotes on Wisdom Trove
• Life lessons

Favourite photographers: Nan Goldin

I first encountered Nan Goldin's work at an exhibition in Amsterdam in 1997, long before I ever took up photography myself. I still remember the impact it had on me. Her photographs didn't just catch my attention—they went straight through to something much deeper.

What I admire most is the honesty of her work. Her photographs are raw, intimate and completely unguarded. She invited us into her life and the lives of the people around her, capturing moments of love, vulnerability, joy, pain and everyday existence without trying to make them look prettier or more comfortable than they were. Looking at her portraits feels less like viewing photographs and more like being trusted with someone's private world.

Goldin reminds me that photography isn't only about creating beautiful images. It can also be about truth, empathy and genuine human connection. Her work showed me that some of the most powerful photographs are those that reveal something deeply authentic about the people in front of the camera. That lesson has stayed with me ever since.

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Kings Cross and Potts Point

A nice stroll around two iconic Sydney suburbs with my Photography Meetup.

 

Lighthouses

"I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve."  George Bernard Shaw

Lighthouse photos I've taken in Australia

Why I love lighthouses

There has always been something about lighthouses that draws me in. They carry the weight of history, standing through storms, wars, changing coastlines and countless human stories. Each one has watched generations come and go, quietly fulfilling the purpose for which it was built. They are monuments not to power or glory, but to service.

Perhaps that is why they feel so deeply symbolic. A lighthouse does not force its light on anyone; it simply shines, offering guidance to those who choose to navigate by it. There is something profoundly beautiful in that image. And then there is their sheer visual presence. Perched on rugged cliffs, lonely islands or windswept headlands, they are among the most photogenic structures ever created—where engineering, landscape, history and metaphor come together in a way that never fails to stir my imagination.

Lighthouses I've photographed

All posts tagged "lighthouse"

• All

Sydney

• Barrenjoey Lighthouse  (Palm Beach)
• Hornby Lighthouse (Watsons Bay)
• Macquarie Lighthouse  (Vaucluse)
• Cape Bowling Green Lighthouse  (Pyrmont)
• Bradleys Head
• Robertsons Point Lighthouse  (Cremorne)
• Flagstaff Point Lighthouse & Breakwater Lighthouse   (Wollongong)
• Cape Baily Lighthouse (Botany Bay National Park)

Australia wide

• Nobby Lighthouse  (Newcastle, NSW)
• Kiama  (NSW)
• Green Cape Lighthouse (Eden, NSW)
• Point Perpendicular  (Jervis Bay, NSW)
• Great Ocean Road  (Victoria)
• Freycinet  (Tasmania)

South Africa

• Cape Point  (Cape Town)
• Green Point  (Cape Town)
• Kalk Bay  (Cape Town)
• Port St Johns  (Transkei)

⬇︎ Keep scrolling for all posts tagged as “Lighthouses”

Spectacular lighthouses around the world

As you can see, I'm completely hooked on lighthouses at the moment. What started as a photography project has quickly turned into another excuse to explore the world. Every lighthouse has its own story, shaped by the coastline, the weather and the people who built it. Some perch on impossibly narrow sea stacks, others stand alone on tiny islands or cling to dramatic cliffs where the ocean seems determined to reclaim them. Here are some of the most spectacular and unusual lighthouses I've discovered so far. 

Four of the world's most remote lighthouses

Lighthouses have always been built where they were needed most rather than where people wanted to live. Many stand on tiny islands, wave-battered reefs or isolated sea stacks, surrounded by vast expanses of ocean. Before automation, lighthouse keepers accepted lives of extraordinary solitude, often spending weeks or months cut off from the outside world. These five lighthouses rank among the most remote and inaccessible ever constructed.

Þrídrangaviti, Iceland

Perched atop a narrow volcanic sea stack seven kilometres off Iceland's south coast, Þrídrangaviti is arguably the world's most spectacularly inaccessible lighthouse. The rock rises almost vertically from the North Atlantic, leaving virtually no landing place. When it was built in 1942, workers first had to scale the cliff face using ropes before hauling construction materials to the summit. Today, helicopters provide almost the only practical access, making this one of the most isolated workplaces on Earth.

Stannard Rock Lighthouse, Lake Superior, USA

Known for generations as "The Loneliest Place in North America," Stannard Rock Lighthouse rises from a tiny reef almost 40 kilometres from the nearest land in Lake Superior. Despite standing on a freshwater lake, it experiences ocean-like storms, towering waves and thick winter ice. Construction took five years because crews could work only during the short summer season, and keepers were frequently stranded for weeks by severe weather.

Cape Horn Lighthouse, Chile

At the southern tip of South America lies Cape Horn Lighthouse, perched on windswept Hornos Island where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet. This is one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth, famous for hurricane-force winds and some of the roughest seas ever encountered by sailors. Even today, a Chilean naval family lives at the station, maintaining a human presence at what is often called "the end of the world."

South Solitary Island Lighthouse, Australia

Located about 18 kilometres off the New South Wales coast, South Solitary Island Lighthouse was one of Australia's most isolated lighthouse stations. Although relatively close to the mainland, dangerous seas often prevented boats from landing for weeks at a time. Everything—from food and drinking water to furniture and livestock—had to be hoisted ashore by crane whenever conditions allowed. For the keepers and their families, life on the island could feel remarkably cut off from the rest of the world.

The remarkable history of lighthouses

Humanity's first beacons

Long before GPS, radar and satellite navigation, there were lighthouses. For thousands of years they stood as humanity's promise to sailors: there is land ahead, and someone is watching over you.

The earliest "lighthouses" were surprisingly simple. Fires were lit on hilltops or coastal cliffs, creating beacons that could be seen from miles away. Ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, realised that a single light could save countless lives by warning ships away from dangerous rocks and guiding them safely into harbour.

Few structures have served humanity so faithfully for so long.

The wonder of the ancient world

The most famous lighthouse in history was the Lighthouse of Alexandria, or the Pharos, built around 280 BC in Egypt. Standing perhaps 100–120 metres high, it was one of the tallest structures in the world for more than 1,500 years and was counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

By day, its polished mirrors reflected sunlight far out to sea. By night, a massive fire burned at its summit. It became the model for countless lighthouses that followed, and its very name—Pharos—became the word for lighthouse in many languages.

Although eventually destroyed by earthquakes, its influence can still be seen in lighthouse design today.

The Romans spread the idea

The Romans understood that safe harbours were essential to trade and military power. They built dozens of stone lighthouses around the Mediterranean and Atlantic.

One remarkable survivor is the Tower of Hercules, built in the second century AD. Astonishingly, after almost 1,900 years, it still functions as an active lighthouse, making it the oldest working lighthouse in the world.

A thousand difficult years

After the fall of Rome, many great lighthouses disappeared. Europe entered a period when navigation became much more hazardous. Coastal communities improvised by lighting hilltop bonfires or hanging lanterns from church towers.

Many early "lighthouses" were little more than coal fires burning in large baskets.

From open fires to oil lamps

For centuries, lighthouse keepers relied on wood, coal or charcoal fires. These produced smoke, required constant attention and were surprisingly inefficient. Nevertheless, they represented a huge improvement over complete darkness.

By the Middle Ages, engineers began using enclosed oil lamps fuelled by animal fat, whale oil and later vegetable oils. These lamps burned more steadily, produced less smoke and could be protected from wind and rain.

The invention of specialised lamp burners in the late eighteenth century dramatically increased brightness while using less fuel. Every improvement meant ships could spot the coastline from farther away.

The age of gas and kerosene

The nineteenth century brought another leap forward. Many lighthouses switched to gas lighting or highly refined kerosene (paraffin), which burned brighter and more reliably than earlier oils.

Gas systems could even be automated to some extent, reducing the workload of lighthouse keepers. Engineers also developed ingenious clockwork mechanisms that slowly rotated the lantern, creating the distinctive flashing patterns that allowed mariners to identify individual lighthouses.

Suddenly, a lighthouse wasn't just a light—it had its own unique signature.

Engineering transformed everything

The great leap came during the eighteenth century.

One of history's most influential engineers, John Smeaton, designed the third Eddystone Lighthouse in 1759. Standing on wave-battered rocks, it introduced interlocking granite blocks shaped much like today's Lego bricks. Its elegant, curved profile copied the trunk of an oak tree, allowing waves to flow around it instead of smashing into it.

Many modern lighthouse designs still follow principles Smeaton pioneered.

Eddystone Lighthouse

John Smeaton

The revolution of the Fresnel Lens

No invention transformed lighthouses more than the Fresnel lens.

Invented in 1822 by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, this remarkable lens used hundreds of carefully shaped glass prisms to capture and concentrate light into an incredibly powerful beam. Instead of allowing most of the light to scatter in every direction, the Fresnel lens focused almost every ray toward the horizon.

The results were extraordinary. A relatively modest lamp could now be seen from over 30 kilometres away.

Many of these magnificent hand-crafted lenses stood several metres tall and contained thousands of precisely cut glass prisms. To keep the enormous lenses turning smoothly, they floated on baths of mercury, reducing friction so dramatically that even a small clockwork mechanism could rotate several tonnes of glass.

Even today, many historians consider the Fresnel lens one of the greatest optical inventions ever created.

Building in impossible places

Constructing lighthouses often required extraordinary feats of engineering.

Some were built on tiny reefs that disappeared completely beneath the waves at high tide. Workers had only a few hours each day to labour before the sea returned. Materials had to be transported by boat, often in violent conditions.

Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson and his family became legendary for designing lighthouses on some of Britain's most dangerous coastlines. The Bell Rock Lighthouse, completed in 1811 on a reef submerged for much of each day, remains one of the greatest engineering achievements of its era.

Engineers developed interlocking stone blocks that fitted together like giant three-dimensional puzzle pieces, allowing towers to withstand the relentless pounding of waves for centuries.

Many still stand today.

Bell Rock Lighthouse

The lonely life of lighthouse keepers

For most of history, every lighthouse depended on people.

Keepers trimmed lamp wicks, polished enormous lenses, wound clockwork mechanisms, cleaned soot, monitored weather, maintained buildings and kept meticulous logbooks. During storms they often worked through the night, knowing that the light could mean the difference between life and death.

Many stations were isolated on tiny islands or remote cliffs. Supplies sometimes arrived only once every few weeks, and entire families lived in remarkable isolation.

It demanded resilience, discipline and an unwavering sense of duty.

Perhaps the most famous mystery concerning lighthouse keepers occurred in 1900 at the Flannan Isles Lighthouse. Three keepers disappeared without trace. Meals were left unfinished. A chair was overturned. The lighthouse was perfectly functioning. Despite extensive investigations, nobody has ever discovered exactly what happened, making it one of maritime history's enduring mysteries.

Electricity changes everything

The arrival of electricity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries transformed lighthouse operation.

Electric lamps were brighter, cleaner and far more reliable than oil or gas flames. Electric motors replaced clockwork mechanisms, while increasingly sophisticated optics extended the visible range even further.

As power supplies improved, many stations became fully automated, gradually eliminating the need for resident lighthouse keepers.

Across the world, the lonely profession slowly disappeared.

Why many lighthouses became obsolete

By the late twentieth century:

• GPS revolutionised navigation.
• Radar became standard equipment.
• Electronic charts replaced paper charts.

Satellite positioning achieved remarkable accuracy.

Most lighthouses became automated, and lighthouse keepers gradually disappeared.

Yet remarkably, very few lighthouses were demolished. Instead, they became treasured landmarks, museums, and symbols of maritime heritage.

The modern lighthouse

Today's lighthouses bear little resemblance to their ancient ancestors.

Powerful LED lights consume only a fraction of the electricity used by earlier lamps while lasting for decades. Solar panels and batteries allow even remote towers to operate without external power. GPS, radar, electronic charts and satellite navigation now guide most ships with astonishing accuracy.

Yet lighthouses remain vital. They provide an independent visual navigation aid that continues to function even when electronic systems fail. In aviation and marine safety alike, redundancy saves lives.

Many historic lighthouses have also found a new purpose as museums, heritage sites and beloved landmarks.

Why we still love them

In purely practical terms, technology has reduced our dependence on lighthouses.

But emotionally, they have never been more powerful.

Few buildings carry such rich symbolism. They represent guidance in darkness, steadfastness through storms and quiet service without recognition. For generations they have stood exactly where they were needed, asking for nothing in return.

Perhaps that is why photographers, artists and writers continue to be drawn to them. They are beautiful structures, but they are also reminders that even a single light—faithfully maintained—can make an enormous difference.

That idea has remained unchanged for more than two thousand years.

Green Cape Lighthouse (Eden)

I was delighted to find these old photos of the Green Cape Lighthouse in Eden I took on a hike there in 2018.  I'd forgotten about this wonderful lighthouse. Another one to add to my collection.

Botany Bay National Park and Cape Baily Lighthouse

Yesterday I walked the Cape Baily Track in the Botany Bay National Park, and the highlight was reaching Cape Baily Lighthouse. The walk itself is excellent, following the coastline through heathland with uninterrupted ocean views for much of the way. Despite being so close to Sydney, it feels surprisingly remote, and the lighthouse is a rewarding destination towards the end of the track.

Cape Baily Lighthouse has been guiding ships since 1950 and is still an active navigation aid today. Unlike many of Australia's historic stone lighthouses, it has a simple square concrete design, giving it a distinctive modern look. It was built to help ships travelling north stay on a safe course close to the coast and avoid offshore currents. I enjoyed the sense of isolation as much as the lighthouse itself. With no roads leading to it and nothing but rugged coastline and the Pacific Ocean surrounding it, it's an ideal place to stop, take in the scenery and appreciate one of Sydney's lesser-known lighthouses.