Following my retirement in 2008 my wife Val and I moved into travel overdrive. We were on the road and in the air, both overseas and locally here in Australia, for many weeks every year. But it was not until 2016 that we discovered Portugal. If you live in the Europe or the United Kingdom, Portugal is right up there with Spain as a top holiday destination. But living here on the other side of the planet, it is not high up our list of ‘must visit’ places.
Nonetheless, a chance reading of a magazine story on the delights of Lisbon triggered us into planning our first visit in 2016. This took in the tourist hot spots of Lisbon, Oporto, Évora and Coimbra as well as smaller and less visited locations.
Self drive
With no enthusiasm for cruises or package tours, we invariably hired a car and drove ourselves, so we were able to take the roads less travelled and, in particular, find subjects in locations away from the tourist crowds.
Portugal is a great destination. For me, it was full of photo opportunities so that first visit in 2016 was followed by repeat pilgrimages in 2018 and 2019.
Little did we realise as disembarked from the plane at Sydney Airport in September 2019 that this was the last trip Val would ever make to Portugal or indeed anywhere. Six months later, Covid-19 disrupted all our lives. And then, at the same time, Val was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Without my wife and Covid-19 lockdowns in place through 2021, any thoughts of overseas travel were very much back of mind. I took some solace in being about to browse through all the images from our wonderful travels.
A family thing
Val was also a Leica user, and she had acquired a Leica C in 2015… It was a family thing.
The Leica C is the Leica derivative of the Panasonic DMC-LFI. It is a tiny camera with a 12MP CMOS sensor, a versatile 28-200mm-equivalent zoom and a small but usable electronic viewfinder. It’s a genre of camera which has now totally disappeared from the market with the onslaught of the omnipresent smartphone.
Despite its small sensor, the Leica C delivers excellent image quality. My adult daughter Lisa uses the Leica C now, and although she is an iPhone 14 user, she has started to prefer using the little Leica for taking travel photos. So it remains a family thing.
The Leica C was introduced in 2013, the same year as the Leica X Vario. Panasonic managed to fit an EVF into the small Leica C, and you have to question why Leica could not have shoehorned one into the X Vario. It certainly would have been more useful than the silly pop-up flash unit they did fit. An item which, in my opinion, is less useful than an ashtray on a motorcycle.
Val used her Leica to take the sort of photos you would expect to take with a smartphone now. She did not post to social media but made photo books instead, arguably a much better use of time and effort. Looking at her photos from Portugal today, food and tourist sights feature prominently.
A choice of three
Whilst Val’s Leica travelled three times to Portugal, I used three different Leicas on the different occasions. In 2016, I took both a Leica X1 and also my, then newly acquired, Leica X Vario.
By 2018 I had acquired a Q, and this was taken as my only camera that year, and it was the same in 2019.
As long-time readers of Macfilos will already know, I have a particular affection for the Leica X1. I purchased mine in 2011, and I have taken thousands of photos with it. Even today, although I have the Q2 and an X Vario, I find using the X1 liberating. It’s small, light, simple to use and the lack of bells and whistles is not a handicap — it’s actually a benefit in my view.
Indeed, in May 2019 — before our Portuguese trip in September — we travelled to Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Berlin for three weeks. And during that trip I had a change of heart on which camera to take at the front door, literally, as we were leaving home.
Last-minute slip
I took the Q out of my backpack and switched it for the Leica X1. Unfortunately, I forgot to switch the battery charger at the same time, but I was saved by long time Macfilos reader, John Nicholson, who lives in Copenhagen and who kindly loaned me his spare X1 battery charger.
Fast-forward to today. In the coming June, I will be stepping out of Australia for the first time since 2019. I will travel to Istanbul and the United Kingdom, but not Portugal. It’s now five years since I last rented a car overseas and rental companies do not look kindly on drivers aged over 75. To be fair, I no longer feel that I am as confident as I was in switching to driving on the other side of the road after such a long break. So it’s trains, and planes for me this time.
Macfilos contributor and local Terrigal resident, Wayne Gerlach, has been trying to convince me that taking the Leica X1 for this forthcoming trip is the most sensible choice because of its weight and size. However, I am pretty set on packing the Q2. So we shall see.
I have not switched to a Leica Q3 because the Q2 has had little use and my Mac already sometimes struggles when processing the 42MP Q2 files. From the Q2 files, I have produced superb, huge acrylic prints of Tasmania for the walls of my new house. Therefore, I don’t really feel the need for the 60MP Q3 files.
When enough is enough
In fact, there have been times when I have questioned whether it was really worth trading up to the Q2. I was enjoying using the Q and there were no shortcomings in its specification as far as I was concerned. I made the changeover in July 2020 when life seemed very bleak, and I was desperate for some retail therapy. On reflection, it was perhaps an unnecessary change.
But back to today. Over the last few weeks down here in Australia, we have been experiencing extreme weather with cyclones in the far north, flooding rains, very high temperatures and even higher than usual humidity. On the extreme days — of which are many — I have installed myself in my home office, switched the fan to max and spent time at the computer sorting through the Lightroom library, starting with the Portugal folders. And so we come to the kernel of this story.
I have already made photo books of some of the 300 Portuguese shots on file. So I decided to really cull them down to a ‘best of’ selection of about 40 photographs, which I will publish as a small book soon.
Quintessential Portugal
As Macfilos does not have room to show the full selection of 40, I have distilled them yet further, and this quintessential selection illustrates the article. They are all Leica photos, but really the cameras used are irrelevant. It is the images and the memories they evoke for me that really count.
And evoking those memories has had a surprising outcome. In the past few days, I have made the surprising decision to go to Portugal again next year. The travel agent is, hopefully, working on the bookings as I type. Driving is off the agenda, so it will be planes, boats and trains. But if all goes to plan, there will be a ‘Portugal 2025 folder’ in my Lightroom library by the middle of next year.
Read more from John Shingleton
Leica X1 in all its glory
The Leica X Vario, a classic digital
More on the Leica Q
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Lovely photographs, John. You really make me want to visit Portugal. Thanks.
Thank you. John, for sharing these wonderful images and your story. And great that you are travelling again. All the best, JP
Love the image of the three people under the trees with the lemon coloured wall as the back drop.
Excellent article as usual John. I love the Q2 for city scenes in black and white.
Loved the article. Perfect timing as I look forward to a trip to Portugal with my wife from home in Bali, Indonesia along with 2 adult daughters from the US, a Q2 and M10-R in May. Your comment about trading a Q in for a Q2 or 3 shows good judgement. It’s is easier to come by good judgement at our age! The equipment isn’t insignificant… but more than a photographers age or camera model… it’s really about the camera in hand, seeing the snap and catching it.
It was a few weeks ago at our weekly coffee that John showed me his initial shortlist of about 30-40 images from his Portugal travels. Our discussion moved on to wonder about the perfect number of images to remember a travel journey. Was it 30-40? Or could it be just 20? Would 10 or so be too few? It’s great to see his final distillation.
And now that I have another look at them I have to declare that my single favourite is the evening (or sunrise) shot of the man on the bridge flanked by the old style lights. Evocative, light, perspective, framing, subject matter etc. and positioned perfectly in the text. It’s an image that I identify with, for some probably weird reason……….yet I don’t remember that one in John’s initial shortlist of 40.
I do hope that he used an X1 to catch it.
Wayne, the man at sunrise photo was definitely in my initial list of 40- as it is also one of my favourites. It was taken on the first morning of my last trip to Portugal in September 2019. The man is looking down on the dock area and the set of steps leads down to the dockside road and tram tracks.
The photo of the tram and jacaranda tree was taken looking down from the same vantage point a year earlier.
Sorry to disappoint but both photos were taken with my Leica Q.
A wonderful set of images that whets my appetite for the 25 remaining ones. Thank you very much John and have a great trip in Istanbul and the UK. Looking forward to see the images you’ll bring back from these places
Jean
You don’t write enough, this is beautiful!
I suspect the Leica X1 fits the almost elegiac mood of the piece quite well!
It seems that good photographers can find beauty in almost anything; I’m thinking of the simple portrait of a man passing a crosswalk — and there’s gold at his feet.
A lovely collection — and I suspect many of us will wonder what the remaining 25 photos are like.
What a beautiful and poignant story John. By chance, my wife and I did a very similar trip some 15 years earlier. Proposed in Oporto (accepted), bought engagement ring in Lisbon (via Coimbra) and spent one night in Evora, a place I found magical. We were treated to a guided tour of the university by one of the professors. I went for a late walk around the town at night, the atmosphere emanating from the old buildings was almost tangible. I’ve only experienced that in one other place.
Thank you for bringing back those memories.
David
John, good to hear from you again and that you will be traveling. I always look forward to your articles.
All the best, Robert.
Thanks John,
As always wonderful images and a thoughtful and engaging storyline. I hope this next trip brings you joy.
I’ve only briefly been to the Algarve for one of those awful corporate retreats so have missed the really interesting and characterful destinations, sadly. There is so much I would love to see that your images make me want to start another trip list. A trip to study the history of Port, the wines of the Douro and on.
I’m planning a trip to Scotland in the autumn (50 years since I last went there) so lots to consider. Do you go to Skye and other islands, or do you stick to the lochs and Cairngorms? How much time for Edinburgh and Glasgow? And on…
Incidentally for those of a certain age growing up in the UK there’s the thrill of hearing the names of towns and football clubs I’ve not heard of since the days of Grandstand, David Coleman, and the chatter of the teleprinter spitting out the results on a Saturday afternoon. Those towns still exist but now I will be able to put a “face” to them.
Apart from wanting to see everything, but realistically only having time for half of it, there’s the what camera to take: The Q (in any form) is a wonderful camera, but it’s not always THE choice for multiple reasons. Maybe the CL + 18-56 gets the nod this time. I still have a few months to deliberate and change my mind a few times.
Cheers! And thanks again John.