Algarve
The Algarve is one market, not six. Lagos and Albufeira are forty minutes apart, the coves between them are photographed by the same people on the same mornings, and splitting them into separate pages would produce two descriptions of the same coastline. What varies is not the town but the tide: half the best locations — the sea caves, the arches, the beaches you reach along the sand — are accessible for part of the day and not the rest, and a session booked without checking the tide table is a session that may find its location under water. The second constraint is the cliffs themselves. The falésias are actively eroding, the edges collapse, and the warning signs are there because people have gone over. Any photograph that looks like it was taken from the lip of a drop was taken from further back with a longer lens, and the ones that were not are not worth what they cost.
February is the surprise: the almond blossom is out, the light is low all day, the coast is empty and it is fifteen degrees. October and early November are the best combination of warm sea and no crowd. July and August are unusable in the middle of the day — the light is vertical, the beaches are full, and any session is at seven in the morning or eight at night. Winter storms are what carve the coastline and a rough day in January produces better photographs than a calm one in June.
Here is where to shoot in Algarve, with ideal times and permit notes.
Stacks and arches of ochre limestone with the sea running between them, and a stairway down to the water. The cliff path above it is the safe vantage; the platform at the bottom exists only at low tide.
The double arch that appears on every poster of the region, seen from the clifftop path rather than from the sand. By ten in the morning in summer there is a queue for the viewpoint.
A sea cave with a hole in its roof, and the most recognisable image in the Algarve. It is also the most misrepresented: it cannot be walked to, the access rules have tightened, and a session that assumes otherwise does not happen.
The other Algarve: a lagoon, salt pans and sandbanks instead of cliffs, flat to the horizon and almost empty. Where the light is soft and the wind is not, which is the opposite of the west coast.
These come under the Algarve rate: a photographer travels out from the city at no extra charge, and the session is priced exactly as it would be in Algarve itself.
Because several of the locations are beaches you reach along the sand or platforms under the cliffs, and at high water they are not there. The tide table is checked when the session is booked, not on the morning, and it is the reason the start time is sometimes six forty rather than seven.
No, and the answer does not change for a good photograph. The falésias erode from underneath and give way at the lip; the fenced setbacks and the warning signs mark real collapses. Everything that looks close was made from further back with a longer lens.