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
Taken 24 June 2026.
Clifftop tree
Tag: Madeira
Curves
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
Taken 24 June 2026.
Tuk-tuk
Today marks the beginning of this year’s holiday pictures, this time from a trip to Madeira at the end of June, start of July (as usual, I’m gobsmacked that it’s already been over a month since we returned home!).
I shot five rolls of film while there, four colour, and one B&W using my Nikon F70 (the first time I’ve shot with this in aaages) plus my trusty travel companion, the Olympus Trip 35 and, while I doubt I’ll post them all, you might be seeing a lot of pictures from Madeira for a week or two…
For today though, just a single image of one of the tuk-tuks that provide city tours around the hilly city of Funchal.
Nikon F70, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Taken 24 June 2026.
Above the lido
I took a few shots of this scene, including on film, but I like this one where the guy’s red hat matched the shirt of the person beside the pool.
Ricoh GRIII
Taken on 28 June 2026
Curtains
I noticed the way the light was passing through the curtains in our hotel room one day and took this picture.
Ricoh GRIII
Taken on 1 July 2026
Still hot
It’s a whole degree cooler than yesterday’s 33.9°C in my home office today. That’s still over ten degrees hotter than I’d like it to be.
My expensive new fan arrived this morning, and is doing a decent job of taking the edge off the heat, but it’s not an air conditioner and there’s only so much that moving air flow can achieve, so it still feels oppressive and it’s been pretty hard to get motivated while working today.
Thankfully the temperatures are forecast to begin dropping over the weekend to a much more manageable mid-20s range (and, more importantly, overnight temps below 20°C, so there’s a chance to open the windows and flush out the hot air).
The sub-tropical climate of Madeira felt more manageable than this, mostly due to infrastructure designed to deal with it – air-con, tiled floors, window-shutters and the like, most of which go against the standard UK building methods that are designed to keep heat inside. If the summer temperatures in the UK continue to rise in future, then there is going to be a real need for change to prevent severe disruption.
But anyway, this is meant to be a photography blog, not an essay on climate change, so here’s another shot from the holiday. It’s another digital picture (although I have received four sheets of film negs back in the post today, so plenty of those to share too when I get around to it).
Being a Portugese territory, you’d expect to see plenty of Portugese flags in Madeira, but there were probably more than usual due to the World Cup tournament taking place while we were there (Madeira also being the birthplace of their famed striker, Christiano Ronaldo – there’s even a museum in Funchal dedicated to him). At this stage Portugal had not yet been knocked out…
Ricoh GRIII
Taken on 27 June 2026
Tinny woodpecker
It’s currently 33.9°C where I sit in my home office, so this will be a quick one.
Here’s a picture of a woodpecker. A woodpecker made entirely from flattened Pepsi and energy drink cans.
Ricoh GRIII
Taken on 27 June 2026
Coastal puzzle
I like the way that these concrete coastal defences have been painted. Looking down on them from above (they’re maybe 5 feet long on each side) reminded me of some sort of puzzle videogame.
If you click through on the image to the larger Flickr version, you can see where footprints have set into the surface of a few of them before they hardened.
Ricoh GRIII
Taken on 27 June 2026
Fortress of São João Baptista do Pico
A few days into the Madeira trip, I took a walk from the hotel to an old fortress that I’d seen featured in an online tour guide. While only half a mile or so from the hotel “as the crow flies”, it was a somewhat more meandering hike “as the human walks” – and not just side to side, but also up and down as the fort was on the other side of a ridge from where we were staying. The final leg of the walk was particularly steep, proper thigh-master stuff.
Once at the fortress the views across Funchal and out south across the Atlantic were very nice. The fortress had scope for a bunch of pictures and I shot several on both film and digital (I’ll share the film pictures on a later date). In terms of other things to do, there wasn’t a great deal. There was a single open room containing paintings of the fort from various times in its history, plus a couple of small empty turret areas, but the rest of the structure was out of bounds. At first I thought I must’ve missed something but, upon asking an attendant, I was informed that more of the structure was planned to be opened at some future date. Perhaps I’ll get to revisit it one day and see the rest.
Ricoh GRIII
Taken on 26 June 2026
Their place
Ricoh GRIII
Taken on 27 June 2026
