I live in the US and Santorini was my first Light & Land tour. It was also the first time I had been to Greece. In fact, the extent of my prior European travels were really just nibbling at the northwestern edges— Norway and the UK—so joining such a well-organized tour reduced a lot of anxiety for this not-that-well-travelled American. When I first signed up for the trip, I knew very little about Santorini that everyone else doesn’t know from Instagram: there are blue domes. That’s where I told my friends I was going: “the place with the blue domes”. Well, there are certainly blue domes aplenty; so many, in fact, that I could not resist titling this image “Dawn of the Domes”:

But there is so much more! There are blue doors:

...and blue windows:

...and blue water:

...and blue flowers:

... and blue secret passages:

... and blue skies:

Santorini is a fascinating mixture of spectacular scenery, vertiginous cliffside towns, tortuous pathways, fresh paint, peeling paint, and caldera views to die and be exhumed for. If you like hundreds of tiny churches and tiny alleys (and the ubiquitous alley cats that have apparently consumed all wildlife on the island except each other) you will love exploring Santorini. Be forewarned that you will repeatedly force yourself to trudge up and down hundreds of steps in search of that perfect spot you were at yesterday but can’t seem to find today. And the food is really, really good. Most mornings we were out for some early-morning sunrise photographs (like the one at the top of this article) followed by a stop at the bakery. Then it was back to the hotel for second breakfast, hobbit-style. Astrid did a wonderful job leading the tour to all kinds of interesting places around the island and we had a nice mix of areas that included the more tourist-centric shops-and-hot-tubs resort districts with more traditional rural villages. There really was a great variety of things to photograph. If seeing more than the few pictures included here will help convince you to join the 2024 trip, I recently published a series of articles on my blog at https://theartfulengineer.com/series/santorini-trip-2022.

Taken during a Light & Land Photography Tour in Santorini 2023.

Join Astrid McGechan on the next Santorini Tour 2024.