Ten regions, picked from ShotScout's catalogue of real scouted locations by how many genuine landscape and dark-sky spots each one has — not a generic top-ten list. Every location shown includes real Bortle dark-sky class and terrain data, not just a name and a pin.
California packs an unusually wide range of landscape photography into one state: Pacific coastline and redwood forest, the granite peaks and valleys of the Sierra Nevada, and the Mojave Desert further inland. Yosemite and Big Sur are the best-known draws, but the eastern Sierra and its high-altitude sites offer some of the darkest, clearest skies in the state for night photography.
The Dolomites are a UNESCO World Heritage mountain range in the Italian Alps, spanning South Tyrol and Trentino. Jagged limestone spires, alpine lakes, and dramatic valley views make this one of the most photographed mountain landscapes in Europe, with elevation doing a lot of the work in lifting locations above haze and low cloud.
Sydney's coastline mixes sandstone cliffs, ocean beaches, and harbor views, all within a short drive of the city itself. It's less about dark skies than most of the other regions here, given the light pollution of a major metro area, but the surrounding national parks and coastal walks still offer genuine landscape photography beyond the obvious cityscape shots.
Lofoten is an archipelago well inside the Arctic Circle in northern Norway, where dramatic peaks rise almost directly out of the sea next to small fishing villages. The high latitude means midnight sun through summer and, in the darker months, some of the more reliable aurora and dark-sky conditions covered in this list.
Mallorca is the largest of Spain's Balearic Islands, and away from the resort towns its Tramuntana mountain range (also UNESCO-listed) and limestone coastline offer genuine landscape photography. The rural interior, away from the coastal development, is where the darker skies on this list are found.
Colorado's Rocky Mountain landscapes include dozens of peaks over 14,000 feet, alpine lakes, and high-altitude terrain that puts distance between you and ground-level haze. Away from the Front Range cities, this altitude also produces some of the darkest skies available in the contiguous United States.
Madeira is a volcanic Portuguese island in the Atlantic, known for sea cliffs, laurel forest crossed by levada trails, and high-elevation viewpoints that often sit above the cloud layer rather than under it. The volcanic terrain creates sharp elevation changes over short distances, which shows up directly in the terrain data for locations here.
Hawaii's volcanic islands range from black-sand beaches at sea level to the summits of Mauna Kea and Haleakalā, high-altitude sites dark and clear enough to host major astronomical observatories. That same elevation and distance from large population centers is what makes several of Hawaii's locations genuinely exceptional for night photography.
Tasmania, Australia's island state, combines temperate rainforest with rugged, exposed coastline. Away from Hobart, its skies are dark enough and its latitude far enough south to make it one of the more accessible places to attempt aurora australis photography, alongside more conventional landscape work.
Bavaria, in southern Germany, pairs Alpine landscape with architectural interest: the Bavarian Alps, alpine lakes such as the Königssee, and countryside castles including Neuschwanstein. It sits further from the darkest-sky end of this list than most of the other regions, but the mountain terrain and lake reflections give it a different kind of appeal.
The best Bortle Class 1–2 locations across every region, worldwide, in one list.