Vanessa Claire Photography

Photographing Camogli: Italy’s Best Kept Secret

When most people think of Italian coastal towns, places like Positano, Sorrento and the Cinque Terre come to mind. However, there are so many much more beautiful Italian towns that are a fraction as busy, such as Camogli. Camogli is a small fishing village located on the Ligurian coastline, about 25km east of Genoa.

The name is thought to derive from the latin word “ad camuli,” meaning “house of wives.” hailing from the days when the wives ran the town while the husbands were away fishing. 

The colourful houses that line the waterfront are a distinctive feature of Camogli and are reminiscent of similar towns along the Italian Riviera. The vibrant colours helped sailors identify their homes from the sea.

Vanessa Claire Photography

Why Camogli is Ideal for landscape photography

One of the things that makes Camogli a perfect base for landscape photography is because of the amazing tall and narrow, seven-to-eight-story buildings that rim the beach promenade, seeming to hug one another. Their brilliant hues of apricot, cinnamon, amber, and cream proudly look out to sea, housing the many boutiques, restaurants, bakeries and gelato shops that line the cobbled street.

Peculiar to this town and to all Liguria are the typical, painted facades, with the unique trompe l’oeil technique on the town’s colourful buildings with stonework details and even some windows painted on. This is a sophisticated painting technique that creates a sculptured three dimensional effect from a two dimensional drawing using shading. As the coastline curves around, your eye is drawn to the Basilica Minore di Santa Maria Assunta that faces onto the port realized in the 12th Century, it features a double facade in the Ionic style.

There are a few locations this town can be photographed from. The first is the composition above where we are standing on a platform behind the Bagni Lido building. Unfortunately there was some scaffolding when during the time we were visiting, but they weren’t in an overly distracting position. While many photographers prefer to photograph a summery feel of the Ligurian coastal towns, with blue skies and pristine water- I was hoping for a stormy mood to juxtapose the bright colours of the town to create a more interesting shot. The photo above played out exactly as I had hoped for- with the moody, dark skies looming over the town and the foreground of the town lit up by some momentary sun rays. Since this was photographed in the middle of the day, I used an ND filter and a 30 second exposure- just enough to smooth out the water but not so much that I could keep some texture in the sky. 

Coloured houses of Camogli, Italy

The photo above was taken in a slightly different location. If you walk past the green building on which the ‘Bagno Lido’ photo was taken from, you can head down a set of stairs onto the beach. There you will find a platform that sits just above the water (I believe it’s used as a beach bar in summer). However, in the colder months, this platform works perfectly to create some long exposures of waves in the foreground of the photo because it looks like you’re shooting from in the water. An exposure of around one second works perfectly to create the turbulent motion effect of the waves crashing onto the foreshore. I also love the way this perspective allows you to see more of the line of coloured houses.

I highly recommend a visit to Camogli as an alternative to the Cinque Terre, due to its unparalleled beauty but without the crowds. It’s very easy to access by both car or train (we drove) and the beachfront hotel we stayed at had breathtaking views from our large terrace and for a fraction of the price it would have cost in the Cinque Terre.  

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