Seville is the hottest city in Europe and its old town was built by people who knew it, so every useful location here is a piece of engineering against the sun.
From June to September this city reaches 40 degrees by one in the afternoon and holds it until eight. That is not a detail to plan around; it decides the entire shape of a session. Nothing outdoors happens between eleven and eight, the ceremony is at eight in the evening, and the light that everyone remembers from photographs of Seville is the twenty minutes after the sun has gone, when the sky is still bright and the walls give back the day’s heat as a warm bounce that no lighting kit reproduces.
Santa Cruz is the engineering. The streets are barely wide enough for two people because they were laid out to shade each other, the courtyards are planted and watered to drop the air temperature by six or seven degrees, and the whole quarter is in open shade from mid-morning. Add the awnings — the toldos strung across Sierpes and the streets around the cathedral from June — and you have a city that has spent five hundred years solving the exact problem a photographer arrives with. Use it and August is workable. Ignore it and April is not.
Pick the session and roughly when. Thirty seconds, and the price is fixed there.
02
Shoot with a local pro
They pick the hour, because in Spain the hour decides the photograph.
03
Get your gallery
Edited photographs in your private gallery, on the turnaround stated for your session.
When to visit Seville for photos?
Late October to early December is the best light of the year here and hardly anybody books it: 22 degrees, low sun, and the city back to itself. February and March are excellent. April contains both Semana Santa and the Feria, which are the two best weeks in Spain to photograph and the two worst to try to schedule anything else in — accommodation quadruples and the centre is impassable. July and August are 40 degrees and the only honest slots are 07:00 and 21:00; the city knows this and lives accordingly, so those hours are busier than you would think.
The best photo spots
Here is where to shoot in Seville, with ideal times and permit notes.
Plaza de España
A 200-metre brick semicircle facing east-north-east, so the whole curved facade is lit frontally by the rising sun and is in its own shadow by noon. The canal in front doubles it. At seven in the morning there are four people and a street sweeper; by ten it is the busiest square in Andalusia and there are rowing boats in every frame.
Best time
Sunrise to half past eight
Permits
Free — public square. Tripods and any staged shoot need a municipal permit, and it is checked here more than anywhere else in the city
Barrio de Santa Cruz: calle Agua, Susona, plaza de Doña Elvira
The only part of this catalogue where the middle of the day is the recommended slot. The streets are two metres wide and whitewashed, which turns them into a softbox: even, warm, bounced light with no direct sun in it from mid-morning onwards. Orange trees, tiled doorways, and the occasional open patio that is worth asking about rather than walking into.
Best time
Ten in the morning to six in the evening — the shade hours
Permits
Free — public streets
Calle Betis y el puente de Triana
Standing on the Triana side, you are facing east across the Guadalquivir at the Torre del Oro and the cathedral, and the setting sun behind you lights them while the water in between goes dark. It is the one classic Seville frame that works in the evening rather than at dawn, which makes it the natural end of a session that started in Santa Cruz.
Best time
The last hour of sun, from the Triana bank
Permits
Free — public riverside
Las Setas de la Encarnación
A timber lattice above the old town with a walkway across the top, and the only elevated view of Seville that is not a bell tower with a queue. Worth the ticket only in the blue half-hour, when the city lights come up and the structure is lit from below — in daylight it is a large brown object.
Best time
The half hour after sunset
Permits
About €15 for the walkway. Commercial use needs prior authorisation from the operator
Also covered from Seville
These come under the Seville rate: a photographer travels out from the city at no extra charge, and the session is priced exactly as it would be in Seville itself.
Triana
Los Remedios
Carmona
Dos Hermanas
Alcalá de Guadaíra
Itálica
Frequently asked questions about Seville
Can we be photographed inside the Real Alcázar?
With a ticket and a camera, as a visitor, yes. As a session — a photographer working with you, posing, changing position, anything a guard would read as a shoot — no, and the Alcázar is strict about it. There is a commercial permit, it runs into four figures, and it is granted for productions rather than portraits. The Casa de Pilatos and the Palacio de las Dueñas are more approachable and less photographed.
Our wedding is in May at eight in the evening. Is that too late for photographs?
It is the correct time. Sunset in Seville in May is at 21:30, so an eight o’clock ceremony puts the couple session at 21:00 in the best light of the day and the group photographs at 21:40 in the afterglow. The version that fails is a five o’clock ceremony, which is still 34 degrees and a sun directly overhead.
Is Semana Santa a good week to book a family session?
No, and not for the reason people expect. The problem is not the crowds, it is that the processional routes cut the centre into sealed sections for hours at a time and there is no way to cross from one to the other. A session booked that week is a session spent standing behind a barrier. Semana Santa is worth photographing as itself, as a separate commission, and it is booked months ahead.
