Calella de Palafrugell — Les Voltes at first light

Calella is the fishing village the Costa Brava is sold on, and the reason is one row of buildings: Les Voltes, a line of white arches built right at the water's edge at Port Bo, with wooden boats drawn up on the slipway in front of them. Either side, small coves of clear water break the coast into pockets of sand and rock.

The arches do the composition for you. Shoot through them and you get a natural frame with sea in the opening; shoot along them and the repeated whitewashed shapes carry the eye down the row. The boats add scale and colour, and the coves give a second, completely different set five minutes' walk away.

The village faces east, so first light comes straight in off the water and fills the arcades with warm reflected light — this is a sunrise location above all others. By ten in the morning in July the terraces are set out and the beach is full; by evening the arches are in shade and the interest moves to the Camí de Ronda, the coastal footpath that runs to Llafranc in twenty minutes over the headland.

Summer parking is the real constraint: the village car parks fill early and the streets are narrow. Come at dawn and it is a non-issue. On the first Saturday of July the havaneres concert takes over Port Bo completely — a wonderful evening, a hopeless one for a private session.