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.
Look up
Tag: Street
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
Their place
Ricoh GRIII
Taken on 27 June 2026
A bus change and a cemetery
Following our trip to Mahón, as seen in yesterday’s post, we had to change buses when we got back to Ciutadella. Our bus wasn’t due for a while, so I took a few minutes to have a quick look at the municipal cemetery, which was right across the road from the bus terminal.
My wife was a little anxious that the bus would arrive and we would miss it, so it was a very brief visit. I also only had a couple of shots remaining on the roll of film in my camera, so it didn’t take long to use those up, with one shot of the entrance, and another of a curved row of vaults* within.
It’s interesting to note the differences between cemeteries in hot, southern European countries like Spain, and those in colder, wetter countries like the UK. The architecture, and methods of interment are very different in both.
* I’m not sure of the correct terminology.
Olympus 35 RC & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 30 September 2025
A last minute trip to Mahón
During our holiday in Menorca we decided one day to take a trip to the nearby city of Ciutadela. However, after arriving, my wife didn’t seem that impressed by the place (I’m not sure why, as I quite liked it, and would return on my own later in the week). So we decided to get a bus to Mahón (or Maó as it appears on all the road signage), the island’s capital.
Menorca isn’t a huge island, and it only took about an hour on the bus to get there. The pictures in today’s post are those I took while there.
The blues in the skies look a little strange in some shots. No matter how much I feel like I’ve got a good handle on scanning colour negatives, I still get caught out by it sometimes, often for not discernible reason.
Olympus 35 RC & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 30 September 2025
Under the arch to the yellow door
Olympus 35 RC & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 30 September 2025
Hidden in plain sight
The picture in today’s post is of Black Swan Walk, a dead-end street in the middle of Sheffield city centre. It has the air of a really old street and if you squint a little it looks almost like rows of the overhanging Tudor storefronts that you can see in places like The Shambles in York. It actually dates back to the late 19th century and, on close inspection, it really looks nothing like The Shambles.
Because it’s a dead-end, at the bottom it widens and there still exists the remains of a turntable and it’s mechanism where carriages would once be turned around so they could exit the narrow street after depositing their goods. There are also stories of ghostly carriages being witnessed entering the street before vanishing!
Fujica STX-1 & X-Fujinon 50mm f/1.9 FM on Agfa APX 100. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 12 September 2025
Steel City Snapper photography 