A second image dump of pictures I took while wandering around Funchal.
I think the first, third, and sixth image would be my favourites from this set.
The first is of another of the town’s forts, this time Forte de São Tiago, which sits right beside the sea. The final shot is of the same location, but taken a few days later.
The third image is a view out to the Atlantic from a bridge that crossed a deep ravine not far from out hotel. The building at upper right is Reid’s Palace Hotel which supposedly does very nice afternoon tea (although we didn’t try it for ourselves). It’s a pretty view and I shot it more than once during our trip.
And, finally, the sixth image is the most mundane of my faves, but I liked this view towards the harbour with the buses in view. We used those buses a lot!
Just another three rolls of film to go through…
Nikon F70, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Fujifilm Superia 100 (expired in 2008). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Following the pictures I shared from my walk to Pico Fort a couple of days ago (the picture sharing, not the walk), here are random bunch of pictures I took on my walk back down the hill and into Funchal centre.
Nikon F70, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Fujifilm Superia 100 (expired in 2008). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
One morning during our holiday in Funchal I decided to take a walk to one of the old forts that are dotted around the city, namely São João Batista Fort, also known as ‘Pico Fort’. I chose this one based on an online recommendation as it has panoramic views across the city.
While not far from out hotel as the crow flies, Funchal is a hilly place and the route was far from a straight line. Nor was it flat – requiring the ascension and descent of a couple of ridges on the way – the final stretch in particular was pretty steep.
While I didn’t set out to document the trip, the photos included here today were shot on the way. The first shows a view of the fort as I began my descent from the first ridge. While it looks like I could walk straight towards it, the twisting route instead took me to the right – effectively where the neck of the bottle on the advertising hoarding points.
The next two pictures are a couple of buildings that just caught my eye. I like the layering of the first shot.
After paying the entrance fee, I gained entrance to the base of the fort before climbing to the main gate, which provided a nicely framed picture of the ocean beyond.
The views over the town were nice, both down towards the Atlantic, and also looking north to the cloud covered mountains, their foothills blanketed by homes.
The final shot is of a tree that stood in the courtyard within the fortress walls and which I photographed with both film and digital. The digital shots were nice, but I think this film shot looks pretty good too.
The fort is quite big but, sadly, much of it is closed to public access with only a single chamber accessible, containing pictures and descriptions of the fort through its history. I spoke to a member of staff about the rest of the building but he only said that it would be accessible “in future”. Nonetheless it was still worth the walk and I enjoyed the hike and views.
I took more pictures on the way back down, but I’ll save those for another day.
Nikon F70, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Kodak Portra 160 / [shots 4 & 5] Fujifilm Superia 100 (expired in 2008). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
A quick post today as I don’t want to miss the eclipse (it’s getting darker as I type!).
So here’s a picture I quite like that I took the other day. The lion looks much too friendly to pounce, doesn’t it. Doesn’t it?
I took a similar picture on film too, so you might see that at some pint as well.
Ricoh GR III
Taken 8 August 2026.
UPDATE!
My eclipse photos, taken with my ancient 8 megapixel Canon S2IS bridge camera with two ND filters Blu Tac’ed to the front. I doubt they’ll impress NASA, but I’m still glad to have gotten them.
I’ve been wondering how to present the pictures I took in Madeira. There are quite a lot of them, but they’re mostly just of stuff that caught my eye (as is most of my photography, I think) and most of them perhaps don’t stand alone as subjects for individual posts.
So I think I’ll drop them in batches, with the odd few separated out where I have more to say about them, or because they’re distinctive enough to fly solo.
So here’s the first batch…
Nikon F70, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Kodak Portra 160. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
This is a shot of the Savoy Palace hotel in Funchal, a large and distinctive building. It’s not where we stayed, but it was on the route into the centre of Funchal from our hotel and, as a result, I took at least a couple of pictures of it. I’ve not gotten around to processing and uploading the others yet though, so they’ll maybe turn up here on another day.
Nikon F70, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Kodak Portra 160. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Steel City Snapper photography 