The excitation of a quantum dot from its ground state depends on the probabilistic nature of carrier capture, and thus radiative decay can occur via a multi photon cascade. It is also possible that non-radiative initial exciton states can be formed when the spins of the component electron and heavy hole have the same sign. Time integrated and time resolved micro-photoluminescence experiments are presented that reveal the broader properties of single photon and multi-photon emission from InAs quantum dots, including single photon emission, polarisation correlated photon emission, and dark state blocking, and their implications in terms of quantum information technology are discussed.