Cornwall is, for family photography, a county of extraordinary light. The peninsula's Atlantic exposure — with no landmass between the north Cornish coast and Newfoundland — means the air has a sea-washed clarity exceptional even by British standards. The quality of light on the white sand and turquoise water of a Porthcurno or Kynance Cove beach in summer, with the sun high and the sea a Mediterranean blue, is something that Cornwall shares with very few places in northern Europe. For family portrait photographers, this light quality — combined with the extraordinary geological variety of Cornwall's coast (granite cliffs, serpentine sea-stacks, slate columns, white china clay, red ochre iron staining) — provides a range of portrait conditions that repays unlimited visits.

St Ives

St Ives is Cornwall's most famous family photography destination and the most visited town on the peninsula. The Tate St Ives (Barbara Hepworth said the light here was "a special thing"; the Tate's white volumetric building above Porthmeor Beach is an extraordinary portrait backdrop), the medieval fishing harbour with its granite quays and pilchard cellar, Porthmeor Beach (the Atlantic-facing beach with its strong offshore light in the afternoon), and Porthminster Beach (the calmer, south-facing beach below the station with its sub-tropical garden) provide a diversity of portrait settings that justifies St Ives's reputation as one of Britain's great art towns. The warren of lanes below the Tate — Back Street, Barnoon, Hick's Court — provide intimate whitewashed family portrait settings specific to St Ives.

Kynance Cove

Kynance Cove — the National Trust cove on the Lizard Peninsula's western cliff above Kynance Cove Beach — is the most visually extraordinary small cove in England. The serpentine sea-stacks (the Asparagus Island, Lion Rock, and the Devil's Bellows blowhole), the turquoise water between them at mid-tide, the white coarse sand, the serpentine rock banded in its characteristic reds, greens, and greys, and the surrounding Lizard heathland (one of the rarest wild plant habitats in Britain for its Cornish Heath and rare lichens) combine to create family portrait settings unlike any other English coastal location. The descent to the cove is steep (metal-edged steps) and unsuitable for pushchairs; sessions are best at low-to-mid tide when the sand beach and rock channels are fully accessible.

Bodmin Moor

Bodmin Moor — the granite upland plateau of central Cornwall, with Brown Willy (420m), Rough Tor (400m), and the Cheesewring outcrop above Minions — provides Cornwall's most elemental upland family portrait landscape. The ancient granite tors (rock piles formed by glacial periglacial weathering of the granite over 10,000 years), the open moorland with its wild ponies and cattle, the Bronze Age stone circles of the Hurlers on Minions moor, and Dozmary Pool (the legendary lake where Excalibur was cast) combine to give Bodmin family sessions a wild, northern character surprising in a county better known for its coast. The moor in August (purple heather and bracken copper) and March (snow possible on the higher ground) are its most dramatically photogenic conditions.

The Roseland Peninsula

The Roseland Peninsula — the tranquil tidal-creek peninsula between the Fal and Percuil rivers, south and east of Truro — is Cornwall's most peacefully beautiful family photography landscape. Unlike the exposed Atlantic drama of the north Cornish coast, the Roseland is sheltered, intimate, and sub-tropical in vegetation. The creek at St Just-in-Roseland (the churchyard of St Just's church tumbles down to the tidal inlet; John Betjeman described it as among the most beautiful churchyards in the world; palm trees and magnolias grow among the medieval gravestones), the harbour at St Mawes, and the coastal walks of Zone Point and Pendower Beach provide family portrait settings of quietly extraordinary Cornish estuarine character specific to the Roseland and found nowhere else in the county.

Porthcurno & the Minack

Porthcurno — the sheltered white-sand cove between the Treen Cliff and the Minack headland, 3 miles east of Land's End — is one of the finest small beach portrait locations in west Cornwall. The beach is oval, white, and slopes gently to turquoise water; the surrounding cliff of pale granite and greenstone means that the reflected light in the cove in summer is of exceptional warmth. Above the beach, the Minack Theatre — the open-air cliff theatre built into the rock by Rowena Cade from 1929, with its granite-carved seating tiers looking out over the sea — provides an extraordinary theatrical-architectural portrait backdrop. The Logan Rock above Porthcurno (the famous balanced rocking stone, 70 tonnes of granite on its natural pivot) and the coastal path east to Treen provide additional portrait settings of west Penwith coastal grandeur.