Photo Locations

Spain in December is eighteen degrees in the south and a light show in Málaga that people fly in for. Where to shoot, which forty minutes decide it, and what the season asks of you.

The bay faces north, which is almost unheard of in Spain. It changes the light, the season and the entire reason to come here rather than south.

An hour from Barcelona and a completely different coast: small coves backed by pine, a white village at the end of a mountain road, and a medieval city that photographs like a film set.

The Costa del Sol gets written off as resorts, which misses that Málaga has the best-preserved Moorish fortress in Spain and is the one Andalusian city you can photograph in August.

Córdoba has the only interior in Spain worth building an entire session around, and one fortnight a year that is worth planning a trip around.

Both are an hour from Madrid, both are day-trip towns, and both are a completely different place before ten and after five than they are in between.

Valencia is the most underrated city in Spain to photograph, and the easiest to do with a pushchair. It also has the hardest surface in the country to expose for.

The only part of Spain where December is reliable sun, and the only part that looks like another planet. The three main islands are far less alike than people assume.

Seville does not have a shortage of locations. It has too many, and almost all of them stop working at the wrong hour. The light decides the route, not the map.

Madrid hides its best backdrops in plain sight: a genuine Egyptian temple, a palace made of glass, and a square that is unusable after nine in the morning.

Granada is one of the few places where the classic shot and the correct shot agree — the Alhambra faces the viewpoint everyone uses, and the evening light lands on it. Everything else about the city takes more planning.

Barcelona has more usable backdrops per square kilometre than anywhere else in Spain — which is why sessions turn into walking tours. Here is the shortlist, and the timing that decides whether each one works.