Las Canteras beach at sunset

Las Canteras runs the whole width of the city's northern neck, from the Auditorio Alfredo Kraus at one end to El Confital at the other. A natural rock bar — La Barra — lies a couple of hundred metres offshore and takes the force out of the Atlantic, so the water inside is shallow and calm and the sand stays wide.

For photography that bar is the whole gift. At low tide it surfaces as a dark line with pools in front of it, the shallow water goes mirror-flat, and the wet sand reflects everything: the sky, the promenade lights, two people walking. It is the easiest place on the island to get a clean reflection with no equipment at all.

The beach faces roughly north-west, so for much of the year the sun sets over open water at the far end; on clear winter evenings the cone of Teide appears on the horizon behind it, which is the shot people wait all week for. The last twenty minutes before sunset are warm and side-lit along the sand; the twenty after, with the promenade lit and the sky pink, are the better ones for the city version.

Summer mornings often come with the panza de burro — a flat grey lid of trade-wind cloud that sits over the north of the island and usually thins out by mid-afternoon. Do not cancel on the morning sky; check the tide instead, because a high tide takes away both the reflection pools and half the sand.