The Last Two Hours of Light Over Antalya Bay

Antalya has a geographical advantage most Mediterranean cities do not: the bay opens to the west and south-west, so the sun goes down over open water with the Beydaglari ridge silhouetted along the far side of it. On a clear evening Tahtali's peak stands out against the last of the colour. The whole coast is oriented for this, and almost nobody plans around it.

Golden hour is short and it moves through the year. The point of a driver is that you can be standing at the right spot forty minutes before the sun touches the horizon, rather than arriving as it disappears. And you stay afterwards — blue hour, the twenty minutes after sunset when the sky goes deep and the city lights come up, is often the better half of the evening.

The old harbour and the cliffs above it take the sun straight on, which makes the Kaleici rooftops glow and turns the water into something worth pointing a lens at. Hidirlik Tower, the Roman stump on the cliff edge at the end of Karaalioglu Park, is the classic Antalya sunset position and has been for a very long time. Konyaalti gives you a clean horizon with the mountains as a backdrop. Further east, the columns of the Temple of Apollo at Side are famous for exactly this hour, standing on their headland with the sea behind them.

In midsummer the sun sets late and hot, the haze sits low over the water, and the colour tends toward pale gold. In autumn and winter the air is far clearer, the ridge behind the bay stands out hard against the sky, and the sunset arrives at a civilised hour — which is why photographers who know the coast prefer the cooler months for this. A day after rain is the best of all: the dust is out of the air and the mountains look close enough to touch.

A tripod if you have one, because the good frames come after the sun is gone and the exposures get long. A light layer — the temperature drops once the sun is off the water. Cleaned lenses, because shooting into low sun shows every smear.

Included: hotel pickup and drop-off, air-conditioned Mercedes transport, a professional English, German or Russian-speaking guide, all entrance fees, lunch at a local restaurant, bottled water and insurance.