Honeymoon Photo Session on Madeira

Most of the couples I photograph here are on honeymoon. They rarely say so when they write. The message is usually about dates and prices, and the word comes out later, in the car on the way to the first location.

What a honeymoon session on Madeira actually involves, from someone who does two or three of them a month.

How much fits into one evening

A honeymoon on Madeira is full: levadas, the cable car, a boat, dinners that run late. The photographs end up squeezed into whatever evening is still free.

One evening is enough. It is not enough for four locations spread across the island.

Edin and Arita booked two hours and two places for their September session. The laurel forest at Fanal first, then the black sand at Seixal. Two hours sounds short. On the ground it was an hour on the plateau, twenty five minutes of driving, and the rest at the beach through sunset and past it.

What to wear at Fanal and Seixal

Fanal sits at 1,150 metres, and it is reliably colder and wetter than whatever Funchal is doing at the same hour. The grass holds water from the day before.

Arita wore a long white dress. Ten minutes in, the hem had picked up mud from the plateau. She looked at it once and then stopped thinking about it, and everything after that was better. A long light dress will get dirty at Fanal.

Two practical notes. Bring one more layer than the forecast suggests, because the forecast is written for Funchal. And if the second half of your session is at a black sand beach, choose the bolder colour rather than the paler one. Pale beige disappears into volcanic rock. White, deep red and strong blue hold.

There is a longer version of this, with fabric and shoes, in the guide on what to wear for a session here.

Nobody can promise you the fog

Fanal is famous for one picture: ancient laurel trees standing in cloud. It is the reason most people ask for it, and it is the single thing at that location nobody can guarantee.

The cloud comes off the north coast. Some mornings it sits on the far ridge and never crosses the plateau. Some evenings it fills the gaps between the trees so completely that the tree forty metres away is a grey suggestion. Edin and Arita got the second kind, which was luck.

If the cloud does not come, the place still works. Clear light through the canopy is sharper and greener. Details on the drive and the timing are on the Fanal Forest page.

Stay past sunset

The most common mistake in booking is ending the session at sunset.

That September evening the sun went down at 20:33. We kept working until just after nine. The half hour after sunset is when the sky turns deep blue, the lights of the coast road come on across the bay, and wet sand starts reflecting all of it.

Those thirty minutes do not fit inside a one hour package. That is the reason to look at the longer options.

Booking

A two hour session covering two locations is the shape most honeymoon couples end up with. Prices and what each option includes are on the couples and proposal page, and the beach half is described on the Seixal Beach page.

One practical thing about dates. Honeymoon couples tend to write two or three days before the date they want, because the trip is already underway. Evenings in the good weeks go earlier than that. If you know your dates before you fly, send them before you fly.

The full set from this evening is here: Edin & Arita at Fanal Forest and Seixal Beach.