Where Exactly Are the Photos Taken? A Map of Our Locations
"So where do you actually take us?" It's a fair question — most people booking a Cappadocia session have only seen a handful of photos online and have no idea whether they show one famous spot or a dozen different ones. The honest answer is: a dozen, spread across a small area, and which ones we use on your morning depends on wind, light and your package. Here is the real geography behind the photos, place by place.
Göreme: where the morning starts and often ends
Göreme is the small town at the centre of everything, and most of our guests are staying here or in nearby Uçhisar. It isn't just a pickup point — the town itself sits inside a valley of fairy chimneys, and several cave hotels have terraces that look straight out over Göreme with the balloon field beyond. If your hotel has a good terrace, we sometimes start your session there before the sun is even up, then move out into the open valleys as the light builds. It also means your last frames of the morning can be back near your own hotel, with coffee a few steps away.
The valleys: Love Valley, Pigeon Valley, Rose Valley
This is where most of the strongest images happen. Cappadocia's valleys were carved by the same volcanic rock and centuries of wind and rain, but each one looks different. Love Valley has the tall, narrow rock towers most people picture when they think of Cappadocia — wide-open, dramatic, and the setting we reach for when a flying dress needs room to move. Pigeon Valley is narrower and greener, with thousands of carved dovecotes in the cliff face. Rose Valley turns a deep pink and orange at sunset, which is why it is one of our favourite late-afternoon locations rather than a sunrise one. We choose between them morning to morning based on which way the wind is blowing and which valley will catch the light first — not on a fixed script.
Uçhisar and the high viewpoints
Uçhisar sits on the highest ground in the region, built around a natural rock citadel, and the roads leading up to it pass several open viewpoints with a clear view across the whole valley system. We use these less for close portraits and more for the wide shots — you, small in the frame, with Cappadocia's rock formations stretching out behind you and balloons drifting past if they are flying that morning. It's also one of the few spots where you can see several valleys at once, which is why it often becomes the single photo guests choose for printing.
The carpet shop and the lantern shop
Not every strong photo needs daylight. A handful of family-run carpet shops in the region keep their back rooms stacked floor to ceiling with handwoven kilims, and one lantern workshop fills a stone room with hundreds of lit mosaic lamps. Both make for a completely different kind of image — warm, textured, indoors — and both are a good option if your morning turns out cloudy or you simply want variety beyond valley shots. We've been working with the same two shop owners for years, which is also why we're allowed to shoot there at all; these aren't generic tourist stops.
Where the wild horses are — and where they aren't
Cappadocia has a herd of semi-wild horses that graze on open plains outside the main valleys, and on a sunset session we sometimes bring guests out to them. We want to be upfront about this one: the herd moves on its own schedule, grazing wherever there is grass and water that week, and no photographer can tell you in advance that they'll be in a given field on a given evening. When we find them, it produces some of the most cinematic frames we shoot all year. When we don't, the sunset location itself — usually a quiet, elevated stretch of plain — still gives you that same wide golden-hour light without the horses.
Locations at a glance
| Location | Best time | What you get there |
|---|---|---|
| Göreme town & cave hotel terraces | Before sunrise / after sunset | Wide town view, balloon field in the background |
| Love Valley | Sunrise | Tall rock towers, open space for the flying dress |
| Pigeon Valley | Sunrise / full day | Narrower, greener, carved dovecotes in the cliffs |
| Rose Valley | Sunset | Pink and orange rock at golden hour |
| Uçhisar viewpoints | Sunrise / sunset | Wide shots across several valleys at once |
| Carpet & lantern shops | Any time, especially if cloudy | Warm indoor light, no weather risk |
| Open plains | Sunset | Wild horses, if we find them that evening |
So who decides where we go?
We do, on the morning itself, usually in the car on the way to pick you up. We check the wind direction, because it decides which valley gets soft, even light first; we check whether the balloon operators are flying, because that changes which viewpoint makes sense; and we think about what you told us when you booked — a flying dress, a particular outfit, whether you mentioned wanting the carpet shop. A full-day session simply means we can cover more of this map in one day: valley at sunrise, cave hotel terrace for breakfast light, carpet or lantern shop if the afternoon sun gets too harsh, and the plains again at sunset. A single sunrise or sunset session means we pick the two or three locations that will work best for that specific morning or evening, rather than rushing through all of them.
If you'd like to see which locations are included in each session length, have a look at our packages.
