Portugal Photography Tour: Charming Towns to Scenic Landscapes

Lisbon exemplifies the photographic art of seeing. To the untrained eye, everywhere you look could be an award-winning photograph as glamorous architecture provides a backdrop, expressive locals dot the scenes, and contrasting colors shimmer as effervescently as the Tagus River. You will find open boulevards, charming alleyways, inspiring plazas, and waterside boulevards. Lisbon is where you come across a wonderful range of sights, but you will need to focus on visual perception. Your lessons will begin with informal discussions of technique with your expert guide and continue with a walk through the city that will connect the winding Alfama alleyways with the grandeur of Baixa.

This is a tour that suits all levels of photographers. Lisbon is a classic introduction that can inspire both amateurs and beginners while also presenting scenes that captivate professionals. You will be greeted at the airport and transferred to your hotel in the morning where you discuss your photography aims for the week over coffee. You will discuss photographic techniques, styles, and subjects, with your guide offering their expert insights. Your route can be customized slightly to your interests, although most of the itinerary is tailored to visit particular destinations in their best light. Your tour will be about inspiring your own creativity, which is ultimately what turns everyday images into extraordinary photos.

Traveling with an expert local photographer, you will set off through Lisbon. First Alfama, where the narrow alleyways mix the light and the shadows. The most obvious composition will usually not work, yet when you refocus, there are wonderful scenes of color and contrast, particularly of traditional people and architecture. Following the tramways, you will cross open plazas to Baixa, a hub of grandeur and glamour. There is an intense mid-afternoon glare here, but as the sun begins to dip the light bounces nicely off the city’s most stately buildings. Towards sunset, you will be down by the river where a lot will be happening, and the art of seeing continues to be your photographic focus. The evening will be relaxed, and TimeOut Market is an excellent place to dine on the city’s best.

Rise early for some city shots in the low light of morning while the still air and quiet streets present a different scene to yesterday evening. You will practice with slightly longer exposures as well as visiting streets that shine in the light of dawn. Throughout this tour, there will be early starts so that you can maximize your time in the premium conditions. After a morning spent wandering the streets, you will have some free time through the middle of the day and a chance to explore Lisbon on your own, perhaps on the number 28 tramcar that connects many of the neighborhoods.

After lunch, you can take the tramcar to Belem where Portugal’s most iconic monuments are your subject for the afternoon. Belem Tower stands evocatively, detail etched into a facade that hangs over the Tagus River. Jeronimos Monastery humbles with its scale, a UNESCO World Heritage insight into the 15th century, and an image that adorns the postcard stalls across Lisbon. With the light fading, there is further opportunity to practice your low-light photography skills. Your guide will have an intimate knowledge of the city and lead you to viewpoints and streets that seem to sparkle in the light of dusk light, and the movement of the city and its people can create some wonderful images of Portugal’s capital.

A palace glistens amid forested hills, the turrets screaming of a distant era. Rugged cliffs rise above the surf, speckled with a rainbow of green. Cobbled lanes are flanked by crumbling architecture, and townhouses lean evocatively into each other. This is Sintra, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape that has been the home of royalty for centuries and was the poetic inspiration for Lord Byron. You will travel here early in the morning, just as the famed palaces are starting to shine. It is a wonderful setting for architectural photography, the subjects including a crumpled Moorish castle, the national palace, and the strange chimneys of a castle with more than 1,500 years of history.

After an early morning around the village of Sintra, you can take a tour of the surroundings and weave through the green landscapes to the seascapes. As well as spending the day, you will also spend the night in Sintra at a boutique hotel in the village that is also a place to relax during the afternoon. This is Lisbon’s most popular day trip, and from 10 am to 4 pm it can be very crowded with tourists. But most have left by 5 pm, and the palaces come back to life beneath the evening sun as warm colors contrast with the lush green surroundings. You will be able to practice long exposures, a technique that makes this fairytale setting seem like a fairytale on film. Lanterns hang from 15th-century buildings as palaces are softly illuminated at dusk with the overhanging of trees framing your photos. For a photographer, Sintra feels different in the morning and the evening, so it will feel as if you have seen two entirely different destinations.

The great challenge of travel photography is not knowing what you are going to find. You have to think and adjust on the move, with perhaps only one chance to capture a destination. It is the opposite of the studio, where you have complete control over the conditions. Leave Lisbon early and spend the day hopping south through Portugal, crossing the redolent plains of the Alentejo region. Your first stop will be Evora, a UNESCO World Heritage city of cobbles and cathedral bells, where the scenes come from centuries past. Cute and charming, it is a city that rewards a keen eye and attention to detail. The Se Cathedral and St Francis Church are unmissable stops for your camera, icons from Portugal’s decorous history.

Stop in Beja, where quaint plazas offer an authentic insight into local life. While the buildings are not quite as alluring as Evora, it is the people that present a photographic journey into the past. Enjoy a planned portraiture session with some of the locals, their faces framed against the soft facades of the buildings. Continue south after a leisurely lunch, the late-afternoon light ideal for arriving in Sagres, where Sao Vicente Fortress stands dramatically on the cliffs. With the sun fading to the west, now will be the time to capture the ephemeral colors of the coastline as the cliffs shimmer from yellow to orange to ochre to red. You will spend the next couple of nights in Lagos, a coastal city with a Moorish history.

Colorful fishing boats rock in the harbor with the bright reds mingling with faded greens and yellows while stacked against a backdrop of whitewashed homes, roving cliffs, and golden sand. Further along the coast, there is nothing artificial, rather just the cliffs and grottoes created by ocean waves. Parts of the coast have disintegrated to leave behind the pinnacles that rise stirringly from the ocean. You will spend the morning photographing this remarkable natural site, framing the islets and water chimneys, and pointing the camera in carved out caves. Travel first along with the land, above the ocean, and then take a private boat tour that enters the caves as beams of sunlight pierce through eroded holes. These are some of the world’s greatest seascapes, so your photographs will be dramatic and daring.

Your afternoon will focus on local culture, a mix of Mediterranean lifestyles, and the inimitability of Portuguese coastal tradition. Each of the towns and villages blends Moorish architecture with harmonious shocks of color, most poignantly in old-world Lagos. The ubiquity of glistening white allows for the other hues to emerge, the vistas easy on the eye and easy on the camera. You will continue to practice portraitures and find many scenes that represent the local culture. As the light fades, there are some vibrant contrasts to shoot as well, notably the commissioned graffiti that now laces some of the old cobbled streets.

Fly to Porto and land to find one of Europe’s great artistic cities. Almost every building in the old center has a painted facade, most of them shaded in the blue that Portugal is renowned for. Entire walls are covered in mosaics that have been created from individually painted blue tiles. Some of these mosaics are inside, where shards of light flicker through the domed ceiling to illuminate the scene. Others are down narrow alleyways, where you must be patient with the light. Spend the day exploring the different neighborhoods found on both sides of the Douro River to contrast ancient, compact Porto with the spacious wine cellars on the opposite bank.

In the early afternoon, you will enjoy further lessons in street and architectural photography before an extended shooting session that will extend from late-afternoon onwards. As the light fades, you can practice long exposures with ND filters, a technique that can lead to the extraordinary photographs you see on magazine covers. Baroque buildings, market traders, locals wandering down the steep steps are all yours to capture as the cathedral spires are silhouetted against the setting sun. As you take these photos, you will find that Porto is a moving UNESCO World Heritage site, not merely a city frozen in the past. Heritage lives and breathes, and it can be wonderfully captured on film.

For your final morning in Portugal, you will have your camera and shoot the old neighborhoods of Porto with few people to interrupt the panoramas found during the early light. Enjoy a relaxed middle of the day with some time to go tasting at one of the port cellars. After maximizing the dusk light, you will take one last photography challenge, with insight from your guide helping to enhance the photos. Light dances through the alleyways after dusk, buildings are illuminated by iron street lamps, and the juxtapositions of life will make for evocative scenes. Down at the river, the light pirouettes across the water and beneath the bridge that defines the city. One of the riverside restaurants will be your setting for a farewell dinner with your guide and a chance to reflect on your photographic aims and the images made over the last seven days.

One last relaxed morning will be yours to lie in bed and take your time. Sip coffee on the balcony as the city wakes up for the day while this morning is for forgetting about the camera and fully indulging in the pleasures of old-world Portugal. Your hotel is located within the UNESCO World Heritage area, and your balcony will overlook the River Douro. Later in the morning, you will have a farewell coffee with your guide before being transferred to Porto’s international airport for your outbound departure.