Greater Lisbon
Everything about photographing here follows from the orientation. The hills of Alfama and Graça look north and east across the roofs, so they hold usable light from sunrise until about nine and then go flat; the riverfront from Cais do Sodré to Belém looks the other way and only becomes worth the walk after six. Getting that backwards is the single most common way a session here is wasted, and it costs nothing to get right. The second thing is the calçada. The pavement is polished limestone, it is genuinely slippery, and it is on a gradient almost everywhere worth standing — which is a wardrobe decision rather than a poetic detail. The third is that the city centre is small: Graça to Portas do Sol to Alfama is twenty minutes on foot, so a ninety-minute session takes in three distinct backdrops without anyone getting into a car.
October and November are the best light of the year and almost nobody books them. Midsummer is the opposite: by ten in the morning the sun is high enough to flatten the hills, and the hour that works starts before seven. February and March are unreliable but empty, and the low sun lasts most of the day when it is clear. August is the one month to avoid outright — the heat, the crowds, and half the city closed.
Here is where to shoot in Lisbon, with ideal times and permit notes.
The highest of the viewpoints and the only one that still has the city to itself at seven in the morning. It looks south-west over the castle, so the light is behind you at sunrise and in your face at sunset — which is why this is a morning location and Portas do Sol is not.
The street the 28 climbs, and the frame everyone wants. It works in the first hour of service and not afterwards: by nine the tram is full of people going to work and standing in the road with equipment is simply in their way.
Open to the river on one side and arcaded on the other three, so it is one of the few places in the city with clean light and no hill. Empty at six in the morning; from mid-morning it is the busiest square in Portugal.
Directly under the bridge, looking west down the river. This is the counterweight to the miradouros: it is useless in the morning and it is the best thing in the city at seven in the evening in September.
A twenty-minute tram ride from the centre and a completely different city: flat, wide and monumental. The exterior needs nothing but an early start. Anything inside is a separate arrangement, made in advance.
These come under the Lisbon rate: a photographer travels out from the city at no extra charge, and the session is priced exactly as it would be in Lisbon itself.
Not on board. The 28E is a commuter line, not an attraction, and from about nine it is standing room only. The photographs worth having are of the tram passing — Escolas Gerais, Graça, Portas do Sol — in the first hour of service. The 12E runs a shorter loop over the same streets and is far quieter.
Anything with a flat sole and some grip. Lisbon pavement is polished limestone on a slope, and it is worse when it is dry and dusty than when it is wet. Bring the good shoes in a bag and change for the frames that need them.
In July, a session that starts at seven is finishing as the first tour groups arrive. At eight you are sharing the viewpoint; at nine there is no photograph left to take at Senhora do Monte that does not have forty people in it.