Madeira

a dream of a destination

Madeira is several things. It’s a fortified wine. It’s an island. It’s a place favoured by retiree Brits, since due to imperial histories and flying boat legends, English is widely spoken. And it is an enthralling landscape, of spectacular peaks and high plains, plummeting sea cliffs, and above all the near-magical labyrinth of “Levada” canals snaking across the island, bringing water from the mountains to the fertile low(er) lands. Above all Madeira is green (ok, for some Madeira = Cristiano Ronaldo, but allow me to skip that part). And for whatever reason, although it largely lives from tourism, it hasn’t - yet - been overrun.

Of course Madeira doesn’t have a lot of snow, but it does happily fit into to my other obsession, with islands.

So far I have found photographing Madeira, especially the levadas and forest, to be very challenging. First of all, there is often massive contrast to deal with. You can of course sidestep that to some extent by zooming in on detail, but Madeira demands context, to get across just how unbelievably crazy some of it is. Context means wide angle, wide angle means including darkest shadows and brightest highlights, and that means huge contrast. On digital cameras white balance can also be problematic, as everything is in shades of green, and cameras try to compensate with an inaccurate magenta shift. As for composition, well, the best angles often would require stepping out over an abyss, and the overall chaos is often overwhelming. Finally, when trekking the levadas, very narrow paths (very adjacent to aforementioned abysses) and narrow, low tunnels make carrying any quantity of gear a real problem.

Levada dos Cedros - one of my favourite levadas.

I’ve visited Madeira twice so far, with a third visit imminent. Photographically, I have almost exclusively used the Olympus 12-100 f/4 lens, on either an E-M5 MkII and E-M1 MkII body. While this was a good compromise, it had some drawbacks. One of these is of course that f/4 is a bit limiting under forest cover. But then again, it’s also limiting - even on micro four thirds - for depth of field. So a faster lens would be of limited use. The 12-100 also gets quite heavy after a few hours, although the ergonomics of the E-M1 in particular meant that I could carry it literally dangling from my fingertips. Another issue is that the 20Mpx micro four thirds sensor has a tendency to turn distant fine detail to mush. This is probably a non-issue in practice, but it bothered me. In fact in bothered me to such an extent, that it was one of the justifications I made to myself for buying into the Hasselblad X System. In my mind, I could create some really nice work with this camera in Madeira. But I’m not taking it: I fear it is just not practical. Obviously weight is a consideration, but the biggest issue is changing lenses in a humid environment, and the lack of IBIS for low light shots where a tripod just isn’t practical. An X2D might be a better fit, but that’s beyond my means, and anyway, it still offers absolutely no protection to the sensor when changing lenses. I would have thought that Hasselblad had heard of dark slides.

tanglewood

So, still with an eye on quality over quality, I will take the OM-1, with 8-25 f/4, 12-40 f/2.8, 40-150 f/4 and 17 f/1.2 - actually the same kit as I took to Iceland earlier this year. But that will generally stay in my Atlas backpack. For more opportunistic shots I will rely on my Ricoh GRIII / GRIIIx pair. Having said all that, it’s all conditional on me getting over the after effects of Covid within the next 2 weeks. Otherwise I can’t see much trekking happening. Right now I can hardly trek to the couch.

From Miradouro de São Cristóvão

As well as the photos here, I’ve published a gallery of Madeira shots so far. Some of them are ok. I think.