Berlin
In a city with hills you plan a session by height. Here you plan it by distance. Berlin is nine times the size of Paris and almost entirely flat, so there is no viewpoint that shows you anything and no two locations you can join on foot in ten minutes. Wanting the Oberbaumbrücke and the Museumsinsel in the same hour means spending half of it on the U1. What follows is the rule the work here is planned around: one neighbourhood per session. Kreuzberg along the Landwehrkanal, Mitte between the Museumsinsel and Monbijou, Prenzlauer Berg around the water tower — each of those carries ninety minutes on its own. The second rule is about permission, and it catches people out: the street is free, but the large parks are administered by Grün Berlin and a commercial production in one is chargeable and has to be registered. Tempelhofer Feld has rules of its own again. That is settled beforehand, not when somebody in a hi-vis vest is standing next to you.
Berlin sits at 52.5 degrees north, and December makes that plain: sunset at 15:55, and the usable hour starts at half past two. May to August is the reverse — the sun sets after nine, and a couple session can begin at eight in the evening without anyone taking time off. September and October are the best combination of light, temperature and empty streets. February is grey and cheap, and anyone who can work with that gets the Museumsinsel to themselves.
Here is where to shoot in Berlin, with ideal times and permit notes.
The bridge faces west along the Spree, so the evening sun sits inside it. The Landwehrkanal alongside is ten minutes of plane trees with no tourists in it, and works all year — in winter because the bare branches let the reflections in the water through.
Three hundred hectares of runway with not one building behind it — the only place in Berlin with a real horizon. Which is exactly why it is the best backlight in the city and the worst place in a wind, and there is always a wind.
The prow of the Bode-Museum splits the Spree and is the one Berlin frame that needs no explaining. At seven it is yours; from ten the coach parties are standing on the Monbijou bridge you photograph it from.
The only hill the city has: sixty-six metres, an artificial waterfall and a view north over the roofs. Not a mountain, but the one place a Berlin session gets any height at all.
A three-hundred-metre axis between weeping willows, built to make people look small — which is exactly why it works for two of them. The Plänterwald next to it is actual forest, ten minutes from the S-Bahn, and in October the best colour in the city.
These come under the Berlin rate: a photographer travels out from the city at no extra charge, and the session is priced exactly as it would be in Berlin itself.
Not for a private session. The moment it is commercial — and a shoot for a company website or a personal-branding series is — the areas Grün Berlin administers require registration and charge a fee. That covers Tempelhofer Feld, Park am Gleisdreieck and the Mauerpark among others. The public street and an ordinary district park are free. We settle it before the booking, not after.
Two, if they are in the same neighbourhood. One, if not. Berlin looks compact on a map and is not: Kreuzberg to Mitte is twenty minutes on the U-Bahn plus the walk at each end, and those forty minutes come out of the light. A session that tries to join three districts delivers photographs of three stations.
Yes, but at two in the afternoon rather than six. The sun sets just before four, and the golden hour is genuinely the stretch between half past two and half past three. For families with small children that is often easier than a summer evening, and the city is empty. What does not work is a slot after the working day.