I’ve just published a new photo gallery, “Madeira: Levadas”. This one has been a long time coming. I’ve reprocessed all the photos at least twice, in different applications. This final selection comes from Capture One, and some of the photos benefit from the new ProStandard profile for Olympus E-M1 Mk II, which makes a noticeable positive difference.

To quote myself:

“Madeira was a long-standing fascination for me, but I never really new why. After finally visiting for the first (and second) time in 2019, I now know. The dramatic landscape criss-crossed by epic artificial water channels - the “levadas” - hand carved out of vertical precipices and disappearing into mysterious tunnels is like no other. It isn’t easy to capture the feelings that exploring the levadas gives in a photograph, but here is my attempt so far. And Madeira has plenty more to offer. I’m amazed that it isn’t up there with Iceland as an over-exploited destination. but I’m relieved it isn’t.”

One upside of being largely unable to travel outside of my immediate area for the last 6 months is that I have been able to spend some time reviewing and refining my huge backlog of photos, trying in some way to extract a portfolio.  Although even this gets tedious at times, and finding the motivation is not always easy, I have made some progress. Largely pushed by the Lightroom v10 debacle, I have now fully transitioned (back) to Capture One and I’m finding it very rewarding. There are some workflow drawbacks, but the degree of control in Capture One is vastly superior to that in Lightroom. This does mean that I have to process my Hasselblad raws in Phocus, but that’s not too much of an issue.

I’m also doing a lot of printing, concentrating on some specific photos.  The one presented here has been at the back of my mind for some time. As far as I’m concerned this is a 5 star photo. It shows the forest wall rising above a waterfall a little about the source of the Levada do Rei in Madeira.

The scale is perhaps not easy to understanding from this photo. It was taken from quite a high perspective, at 30mm equivalent focal length. Everything in the picture is bigger than it looks. It is easier to understand on a print, and I’ve printed this at A2 size.  I believe it is due to a slight lack of depth perception which comes from the micro Four Thirds sensor.  It was actually from my two trips to Madeira in 2019 that I started to find I was hitting the limits of m43, not only from this depth perception issue, but also in terms of far distance definition, and of dynamic range. This led me eventually to the Hasselblad X system as a complementary system.

Still, I enjoy this photo very much, and the Olympus E-M1MkII and 12-100 lens enabled me to take it. The Levada do Rei is quite an easy hike, but others are less so (the terrifying - but beautiful -  Levada do Norte for example), and I’m not sure even now if I’d take the Hasselblad system on such a trek.

Summerbreeze is blowing through your window
And summerbreeze is blowing through your hair
Something in your eyes that took me by surprise
Don’t tell me that it ain’t there

Emiliana Torrini - Summerbreeze

Well, that’s a totally irrelevant quote. Although nothing is really irrelevant, is it?  There is no shortage of summer around these parts, even if the breeze part could do with some replenishment. So, I realised I don’t really write much about my own photography here these days, even if it is superficially the point of the exercise.

Therefore I would kindly direct you to some recent uploads. One, I’ve refreshed one of my “recent work” galleries here, with some, well, recent stuff.  It includes a significant representation of photos from Madeira, of which I have lots, and I’m still struggling to edit. The levadas of Madeira have capitvated me in a way that little else in quite some time, but getting that fascination across in photography is a puzzle.

In a very, very convoluted way the above quote sort of points to the next set, which is actually a refresh of a gallery I used to have here: Pyramiden, in Svalbard. A couple of weeks ago I was persuaded to do yet another backflip and agree to join a short expedition to East Greenland in September. Which means I needed to dust of some of “Arctic” stuff a bit. Maybe I’ll add some more.

Anyway, do please take a look. It’s free, it won’t hurt, and something may take you by surprise.

Lord it’s hot here.  Too hot to type.