Hesse
The skyline stands on the north bank, so you photograph it from the south: the Deutschherrnufer and the Eiserner Steg look north across the Main, and in the evening the sun lays itself across the towers from the left. The Main is barely two hundred metres wide here, which is just enough to fit a tower into a frame without it becoming a stripe. Two streets further on Sachsenhausen begins, timber-framed and cobbled — the contrast is sharp enough that a session can play both registers in forty minutes without getting into a car. What separates Frankfurt from every other city here is the fair calendar. During the Buchmesse, Ambiente or Light + Building the city is full, hotel rates triple or quadruple, and every photographer with corporate clients is booked. For trade-fair work that is the season; for a wedding on the same weekend it is the reason the guests cannot find rooms. Both belong in the same plan, and early.
April to June and September to October are the usable windows — with the caveat that the big fairs fall in exactly those months. Anyone getting married checks the fair calendar before fixing the registry office, not after. In high summer the sun is too high to model the towers; they go flat and uniform. Between November and February the skyline is lit after dark, and blue hour on the Deutschherrnufer is the best frame Frankfurt has.
Here is where to shoot in Frankfurt, with ideal times and permit notes.
The standard skyline view, and rightly so: from here the river, the towers and their reflection are one frame. Twenty minutes after sunset the window light and the sky reach the same brightness — that is the window, and it lasts about a quarter of an hour.
The footbridge between the old town and Sachsenhausen, padlocks on the railing and the skyline behind you. From nine it is a commuter route; before that it is yours, and the lattice throws long shadows across the deck.
Reconstructed timber gables around a small square — built tight, so it takes direct sun only between eleven and two and is evenly soft otherwise. From ten there is a tour group in it; in December there is a Christmas market in it for six weeks.
Twenty hectares of botany with glasshouses that work in any weather — the most reliable wet-weather plan in the city. The palm house is big enough for a group, the tropical houses are not, and in winter every lens in there fogs in seconds.
Two hundred metres above the city and the only publicly accessible tower terrace in Frankfurt. The view runs south over the Main to the Taunus — but no tripods, so this is a place for the couple in the foreground rather than for a long exposure.
These come under the Frankfurt rate: a photographer travels out from the city at no extra charge, and the session is priced exactly as it would be in Frankfurt itself.
Because it decides both availability and price. In a big fair week hotels are booked out at three to four times the rate, restaurants in the centre are fully reserved and suppliers are committed. For a wedding that means guests cannot find rooms. For a corporate session it means the opposite — the date has to be fixed a long way out. We check it against your enquiry.
Roughly fifteen to twenty-five minutes after sunset, and it holds for about a quarter of an hour. Before that the sky is too bright and the windows read as dead; after it the sky is black and the skyline is a string of lights with nothing around it. That is why, for this subject, we meet an hour before sunset rather than after it.
On your own stand, yes, within its footprint. Anything beyond it — aisles, other stands, the outdoor areas — needs accreditation from Messe Frankfurt, and another exhibitor’s stand needs their consent on top. We handle the accreditation, but it takes several days’ notice.