MADEIRA - PART 2
Before getting started, I must apologize for the delay in getting blog posts out. This time it’s not my fault. See, I did a wonderful and fun (at least in my mind) story about our trip, but when I uploaded the images, most of them (the iPhone photos it seems) came out all wonky. My technical support (Ann) contacted SquareSpace and lo and behold, I’m not the only one having that problem. They’re working on it. They have been for a few days. Still, the images are all wonky. So I’ve decided to try and do this post in the hopes that the .jpgs from my cameras come out the way they’re supposed to. They did on the unpublished story (it will come!). So if you’re reading this, my wild guess was right and you can see these.
I should also note that I have refrained from publishing most of the images that I really want to work on. My “photographs” so to speak. I still need to let them sit a bit before I fully get into them. These are the travel photographs, though as you know, nothing is really just a snapshot. Still, these images are to basically tell a story of our wanderings through Madeira.
The next stage of our trip was moving locations from our Airbnb in Funchal to the one in Seixal in the north (closer to the Fanal Forest among other things). Given our respective check-out and check-in times, we took our time driving along the south and west coasts (after a stop at a bigger grocery store for foodstuffs) and the first of several great lunches in Ponta do Pargo.
A bit further north along the coast, we stopped off at yet another miraduro (viewpoint), where I made this image. We then received a text that the rental host would meet us in about 45 minutes in Seixal; just enough time for us to get there with no extra stops.
We spent the rest of that afternoon (actually evening) getting settled into our new digs and first thing the next morning (after coffee and breakfast of course) we were on our way to the Fanal Forest.
This time we drove up via Ribera da Janela not in the rain and fog and could actually see the road. It was slightly overcast and Ann and I decided to continue our exploration of the forest by starting in the part of the forest we hadn’t gotten to previously.
We found ourselves a very interesting grove in the eastern part of the forest, and like our previous trip, started making preliminary images with our point and shoot cameras.
Suddenly, the fog rolled in. Instead of rushing back to the car to grab the tripods and bigger cameras, we just took our time, seeing how the images might turn out with fog, knowing that the point and shoot will produce a fine image if we take care.
That call was a good one because it wasn’t long before the fog lifted and we were left with cloudy skies. We probably wouldn’t have made it back to the grove with our bigger gear before the fog lifted.
We continued our wanderings, photographing what seemed interesting both to create images . . .
. . . and to explore the potential for future images under different conditions.
As you can tell, the laurel trees are amazing, but not easy to photograph.
We continued our day with a trip to Porto Moniz, the closest bigger town to Seixal. Porto Moniz is located in the northwest corner of the island and has plenty of off-shore rocks that can be a bit mesmerizing to watch.
Some of the interesting features such as arches and holes extend directly from the shoreline too.
One of my bigger disappointments with Madeira (particularly at Seixal and Porto Moniz) is that the off-shore rocks are blocked from human access, unlike in places like Yachats or Seal Rock in Oregon. I’m not sure whether it was because the seas were rougher than normal or because they are, but the signs were clear - access was not allowed. I’d hoped to do some carefully timed photographs of the rocks and ocean, but given that the only views were from above looking down, I had to abandon that idea.
The following morning we were up early and driving the steep, windy road to the Fanal Forest in the dark. It was a trip we were to become very familiar with. We were fortunate to find early morning fog and immediately set off to photograph the locations we’d previously scouted.
Unfortunately, the fog didn’t last very long that morning and we lost the fog’s effect of minimizing the distracting backgrounds in our photographs. Still, we enjoyed ourselves that morning.
As the sun rose and the crowds started arriving, we headed out. After a bit of exploring we wound up at a different overlook to the Nun’s Valley. This one was quite a bit lower from our first vantage point from the week before, and required a short hike along a ridge line, but it offered a variety of views. While the plateau where the Fanal Forest is located (Paul da Serra) was below the clouds, clouds engulfed Pico Aieiro and Pico Ruivo not far from Curral das Freiras (the town in the Nun’s Valley). By the time we were hiking up the trail, the sun started to break through and make a show of it.
The overlook was extensive and wrapped around the end of the hillside, looking in several directions. At the narrow end of the valley’s mouth you could see from close up, a sight that can be found throughout Madeira - houses and small farm plots clinging to steep-sloped mountainsides. Whoever thought to build there, and then put a road there, must have been nuts.
Given that the weather had broken and the sunlight was putting on a show, Ann and I decided to hang around a while to enjoy and to make photographs.
But it didn’t take very long for things to change yet again, and the rains started coming. So we headed back in a drizzle . . .
. . . only for the weather to break yet again and offer us a rainbow.
The next morning’s forecast was for partly cloudy skies and no fog. So Ann and I decided to sleep in a bit and have a good breakfast before heading out. No need to drive up in the dark if we didn’t have to. Anyway, we wanted to photograph on the coast a bit before heading upland.
The short drive from Seixal to the Praia da Ribeira da Janela (Janela River beach), gifted us a lovely reflection from the low rising sun that day.
Our first visit to this location was a blustery, wet one that was totally uninviting for image-making. This morning was quite different, with a moderate breeze and the lovely sound of surf crashing on a rocky beach. My first shot was of the river entering the ocean.
We then spent some time at our destination, a sea stack that I’d scouted from Google Earth. Although the possible photography points were limited and the vantage points less than ideal, we both made some images, experimenting with the movement of the water and the surf crashing on the rocks. As we made our way back to the car (walking on a beach of boulders is harder than one might think), we stopped to photograph yet another rainbow in Madeira.
By the time we arrived to the Fanal Forest it was very bright and the opportunity to make good images was very limited. Still, we knew the value of visiting a location repeatedly and decided to continue scouting for images - work that often pays back the effort when conditions are ideal for image making. Plus, can you really call spending a couple hours in a place like this “work”?
Still, you can see the challenges in photographing in the forest. As beautiful as each tree may be, how does one keep an image from becoming a cacophony of trees?
I kept trying to think of ways to photograph the complexity inherent in these clusters of trees, attempting to afford some semblance of order to the visual chaos.
It isn’t easy, because so many trees there are simply magnificent to behold and one wants nothing more than to present it in isolation for all to behold. Which all too often is impossible.
As the day turned to afternoon, we headed back, stopping along the way at miradouros we’d previously passed-by. This one was a perfect example of what I’d mentioned before. A couple of small houses, with a stair leading down a steep slope to farm plots on even steeper slopes that end at the edge of a cliff (to the left). I think most Madeirans must have some mountain goat DNA in them.
During dinner that day we checked the long range forecast. One more day of sun and then quite a few days of rain were forecast. We decided that we’d better plan for something slightly different to take advantage of non-wet conditions.
Stay tuned for Part 3 to find out what that was.