Mirador de San Nicolás

A small terrace at the top of the Albaicín, and one of the rare places where the famous viewpoint and the correct viewpoint are the same one. The Alhambra faces roughly west toward it, so at the end of the day the light lands on the palace walls while you shoot from the shaded side — warm stone, long shadows, mountains behind.

The terrace is genuinely small. Before sunset it fills with visitors and buskers, and the low wall everyone leans on is the only clean foreground. Sunrise is the same view with nobody on it, and the Sierra Nevada is usually clearer before the day heats up.

Between November and May the mountains normally still carry snow, which is what turns that background from a brown ridge into the photograph people have in mind.