Hamburg
Hamburg sits at 53.5 degrees north, further north than anywhere else here, and that is not a footnote but the basis of the plan. On 21 June the sun sets at 21:55 and it stays light past eleven; on 21 December it is over at 15:50. A family session in June starts at half past eight in the evening; the same session in December starts at two. Ignore that and you book a five o’clock slot in winter and photograph in the dark. The second thing is the weather, and it is better than its reputation — just different. Hamburg has around a hundred and thirty days with rain, but rarely a whole day of it; the pattern is hourly, and it produces the light the city ought to be known for: a gap in the cloud over the Elbe that lights everything for a second. That is not a reason to move the date but a reason to build in twenty minutes of slack. What you do plan is an interior within reach — and in the Speicherstadt one is never more than five minutes away.
May to August is the season of long evenings and the only stretch in which a session after the working day still has light. September and October give the clearest days of the year and a wind that roughens the Elbe — good for pictures, unkind to hair. November to January is a midday matter: usable between eleven and three, and in those hours the Speicherstadt and the Elbphilharmonie are emptier than they are in summer. March is unreliable; April can do anything.
Here is where to shoot in Hamburg, with ideal times and permit notes.
Red brick over narrow canals, and the alleys are tight enough that direct sun only reaches in around midday. So this is not a golden-hour location but a blue-hour one: from dusk the Speicherstadt is lit and looks like the thing it holds the World Heritage listing for.
Thirty-seven metres above the harbour, open on every side, and free to enter — you only need a timed slot booked in advance. The west side gives you the Elbe and the cranes, the east side the Speicherstadt, and the circuit takes ten minutes.
Some five thousand steps between captains’ houses falling south to the Elbe — Hamburg’s only slope and its only place with afternoon light from the front. People live here, so the work is quiet and without a rig.
An inland lake in the middle of the city with a seven-kilometre path round it and sails on it into October. The west bank takes the morning and the east bank the evening — a distinction that matters more here than elsewhere, because there is no shade to hide behind.
Four hundred metres of framed tube twenty-four metres under the Elbe, symmetrical to the vanishing point and identical in any weather. This is the fallback when it is raining sideways outside — and often the best frame of the day.
These come under the Hamburg rate: a photographer travels out from the city at no extra charge, and the session is priced exactly as it would be in Hamburg itself.
Usually nothing. Hamburg rain comes by the hour, and twenty minutes of slack in the running order absorbs most of it. For the rest there are interiors within walking distance: the old Elbe tunnel, the arcades at the Rathausmarkt, the shopping passages. We move a date only for continuous rain or a storm warning, and then at no charge.
In December between half past two and half past three, and after that it is over. In practice: winter sessions sit at midday, and anyone who cannot get away in the afternoon takes blue hour in the Speicherstadt instead — it begins around 16:15 in December and is one of the few subjects here that is better in winter than in summer.
A free timed ticket, taken online or from the machine. Private photography is unrestricted; the moment it reads as commercial — a rig, an assistant, changes of outfit — it needs clearing with the operator. For a couple or family session carrying nothing but a camera it does not arise.