Photographing Positano and Sorrento

Positano is a vertical town

The frame you came for

Positano has no square and no flat middle. It is a ravine with a village poured into it: pink, ochre, faded terracotta and cream houses stacked on each other, bougainvillea over the retaining walls, and the majolica dome of Santa Maria Assunta in the middle, yellow, green and blue.

You cannot photograph that from inside it. The frame everyone has in their head comes from three places, all low and looking back up.

• The eastern end of Spiaggia Grande, by the jetty. Back to the water, subjects on the dark sand or the boat ramp, and the town rises behind them, dome centre-left.
• Via Positanesi d'America, the cliff walkway that leaves the west end of the beach towards Fornillo. Six minutes on the level. At Torre Trasita you get the town across water with the tower as foreground — the better view, and almost nobody walks it.
• From a boat, a hundred metres out. The only way to hold the whole face of the town in one frame without a wide lens bending the edges. An hour on a gozzo off the jetty is the best money in the session.

The light is shorter than you think

The ravine faces south-southwest and the ridges either side are high. In the morning the town sits in its own shadow while the sea in front is already burning — an awkward exposure, and a beautiful frame if you work with it. Direct sun lands on the top houses first and works down.

Late afternoon is the reliable window and it is short. The sun goes behind the western ridge long before it reaches the sea horizon, and the town goes flat and blue in ten minutes. Whatever sunset time your app gives you, subtract thirty to forty minutes and treat that as the hard end. Then stay: when the lamps come on the terraces turn warm against a sky still blue, and for twenty minutes that is the best picture of the evening.

The steps, and who should not do this

Say this before booking, not after. Positano is a staircase. The ring road runs one way above the town; from the Sponda stop to the beach it is a continuous descent of stepped lanes, ramps and more steps — several hundred — and the way back is the same in reverse. There is a small internal bus, one way only, and in season you queue for it.

• Wrong for a pram: no alternative route down, no public lift that solves it.
• Wrong for limited mobility, a recent knee, a late pregnancy, or anyone unsure on uneven stone.
• A long train works within two hundred metres of the beach and nowhere above it.
• A small child in July gets carried down and back up. Decide knowing that.

If one of those lines is your group, do not compromise: go to Sorrento, sixteen kilometres back along the coast, and flat.

Where the crowd is not

Via dei Mulini, the main descent, is single file from ten in the morning until six. Nothing usable gets made there.

What stays quiet: the stepped lanes above Via Pasitea towards Liparlati, five minutes of climbing off the tourist line, painted doors and washing lines and nobody; the Fornillo walkway; and Spiaggia Grande before half past eight, sunbeds still stacked. Most of the beach is licensed concession and the free strip narrow: do not set up on a row you have not paid for. Drones over the built-up coast are a no.

Sorrento is flat

The terraces

Sorrento is the top edge of a tufa cliff, fifty metres straight out of the water, with the town laid level along it. The historic centre walks without a gradient, which is why it is the right answer for families, grandparents and anyone pushing a pram.

The Villa Comunale earns its crowd: a public garden on the cliff edge, a railing over the drop, the port of Marina Piccola straight below, the whole gulf, and Vesuvius across it. Free, though the gates shut at night — check the closing time if you shoot in December. It fills from half an hour before sunset, railing first: be there an hour early. A lift drops from the garden to the port for water level after.

One seasonal detail changes the photograph. In midsummer the sun sets far to the northwest, out over the water beyond Ischia, so from the terrace it is inside your frame and you are shooting into it. By late autumn the set point has swung to the west-southwest, behind the peninsula's own hills: the terrace loses the light earlier and the reward changes — the sun leaves the frame, Vesuvius goes pink. Two pictures, so decide which before you pick the date.

Next door, the cloister of San Francesco: interlaced arches, bougainvillea over the columns, deep shade. Work it an hour or two before the terrace, with a second idea ready — it hosts ceremonies and can be shut without warning.

Marina Grande

Below the town, down a stepped lane that passes under the old Greek gate, Marina Grande is still a working fishing village: nets on the quay, boats hauled up the slip, ochre and rust-red houses at the waterline, restaurants on piles. About a hundred steps down, or the long way round by road.

Shoot it in the morning. The headland east of the marina keeps the sun off the quay for the first hours: soft light while the men are actually working, and the two end together. It is the one part of Sorrento that photographs as somewhere people live rather than visit. Skip Marina Piccola at water level — it is the ferry port and looks like one; from the garden above it is fine.

For something rougher, at Capo di Sorrento walk down through the olive groves, fifteen minutes, to the Bagni della Regina Giovanna: a rock pool joined to the sea by a natural arch, a ruined Roman villa on the headland above. No railings, the last stretch is hands on rock, and by eleven in July every ledge is taken. Early, closed shoes, no long dress.

Which town for whom

Timing and cost

An hour is one location done properly: Spiaggia Grande plus the Fornillo walkway, or the Villa Comunale plus the cloister. Two hours is what Positano asks for once the walking is counted. Three is a wedding morning.

Central Sorrento is a ZTL and the car parks fill by mid-morning; in Positano you park up on the main road, so the descent and the climb are on foot anyway. The seasonal ferry between the two towns skips the coast road and is worth the ticket in August.

Sessions are EUR 279 for one hour, EUR 465 for two, EUR 649 for three, all in, nothing added afterwards.

The Positano and Sorrento pages have the location detail. Shooting as two, start from couples; with children or grandparents along, family is the honest place to begin. And if you keep one line from all this, keep the one about the pram.

Book the light, not the hour. In Positano the difference between a good frame and a flat one is about twenty minutes.

Frequently asked questions

Where do you get the classic Positano photo with the majolica dome?

From three places, all low and looking back up: the eastern end of Spiaggia Grande by the jetty, Via Positanesi d'America at Torre Trasita – six minutes on the level, and almost nobody walks it – or from a boat a hundred metres out, the only way to hold the whole face of the town in one frame without a wide lens bending the edges. You cannot photograph it from inside the town.

What time does Positano lose the light in the evening?

Thirty to forty minutes before whatever sunset time your app gives you: the sun goes behind the western ridge long before it reaches the sea horizon, and the town goes flat and blue in ten minutes. Then stay – when the lamps come on the terraces turn warm against a sky still blue, and for twenty minutes that is the best picture of the evening.

Is Sorrento or Positano better for a family photoshoot with a pram?

Sorrento: the historic centre sits level on top of a tufa cliff, the Villa Comunale is a flat walk from most hotels, and there is shade and no stairs to negotiate. Positano is a staircase of several hundred steps from the Sponda stop to the beach, with no alternative route down and no public lift – wrong for a pram, limited mobility or a late pregnancy.