Agios Ioannis beach with Delos on the horizon

Agios Ioannis is a short crescent of pale sand on the south-west coast, tucked behind a headland that shelters it from the north wind. Straight across the channel lie Delos and Rinia, low and bare, and the sun goes down more or less over them. It is the cove that Shirley Valentine made briefly famous, and it has stayed small: a chapel, a couple of tavernas, rocks at the northern end.

For a session it solves several problems at once. There is no climb and no cliff edge, the sand is pale enough to bounce light back into faces, the water shelves gently for anyone who wants to be in it, and the islands on the horizon give the frame depth that an empty sea never does. The rocks at the north end add structure — a place to sit, a line to walk along — and keep buildings out of the background.

The light is the point. From roughly May to August the sun sets behind Delos, so you get a hard silhouette on the horizon and a copper path across the water; in spring and autumn it swings further south and drops into open sea instead. Blue hour afterwards is unusually long here because the headland keeps the wind off and nobody is in a hurry to leave.

Practical: two beach clubs take up most of the sand and their loungers are not a background you want, so the working ground is the free, rocky northern end. Parking is a small lot on the road above and it fills in season. And when the Meltemi shuts the northern beaches down, this is the sheltered side of the island — which is exactly when it earns its place in a shoot plan.