North Rhine-Westphalia
Every Cologne session begins with the same question: cathedral in the frame or not. If you want it you stand in Deutz on the far bank, and you stand there in the evening — the cathedral is on the west bank, from Deutz you are looking west, so the morning gives you backlight and the late afternoon gives you the facade lit from the front. That is the opposite of what most people assume, and it is the commonest reason for photographs in which the cathedral is a black silhouette. If you do not want it, there is more choice here than the city gets credit for. The Belgisches Viertel is nineteenth-century blocks with trees and holds light down the side streets; the Rheinpark on the Deutz side is a 1957 garden exhibition with the view back across; and the Hohenzollernbrücke carries two subjects at once, the padlocks and the trains. What actually governs the Cologne calendar is Carnival: from the Thursday before Lent to Ash Wednesday the centre is unavailable for anything else, and that is not a day or two but six.
May, June and September are the most reliable months — long evenings, and the Rhine carries enough water for the towpaths to be walkable. In high summer the riverbank is crowded in the evening; go in the morning for quiet. Carnival, in February or March, blocks the centre entirely for the best part of a week. Between November and February the cathedral is floodlit after dark and, seen from Deutz at blue hour, better than on any summer evening.
Here is where to shoot in Cologne, with ideal times and permit notes.
Five hundred metres of stepped seating at the water’s edge, built as a grandstand for exactly this view. In the afternoon the sun is behind you and lights the cathedral and old town from the front; in the morning the same thing is a silhouette.
The busiest railway bridge in Germany, with the footway running right alongside it. The padlocks on the railing are the famous subject and the passing trains are the better one — both need you to stand still, because a live line runs a metre to the left.
Nineteenth-century facades, plane trees and cafés around the Brüsseler Platz, far enough from the cathedral that nobody asks where you are. This is the address for lifestyle and personal-branding work where the city should be a backdrop rather than the lead.
Forty hectares of 1957 garden exhibition directly behind the Rhine boulevard: lawns, mature trees and enough space that a family with three children is in nobody’s way. The cable car above it runs from April to October.
The coloured gabled houses on the Fischmarkt are the Cologne postcard, and they work for exactly one hour — early on a Sunday, before the terraces open. After that the square is full of chairs and the subject is gone.
These come under the Cologne rate: a photographer travels out from the city at no extra charge, and the session is priced exactly as it would be in Cologne itself.
From the Deutz bank, in the late afternoon. You cannot fit it into a frame from inside the old town — it is too tall and the streets are too tight — and in the morning, from Deutz, the sun is behind it. If you want both the cathedral and the old-town streets, walk the Hohenzollernbrücke: eight minutes, and it is a subject in itself.
In the centre, yes, from the Thursday before Lent to Ash Wednesday. Streets are closed, hotels are full, and the Rhine boulevard is no place for a quiet session. Outside the ring road and in the Rheinpark it is workable. Anyone who wants Carnival itself as the subject is of course in exactly the right week — but that is reportage, not a planned session.
Privately and without a tripod, yes, outside services. Anything that reads as a production — tripod, flash, an assistant, a change of clothes — needs permission from the cathedral works office, and for wedding reportage it is generally not granted unless the ceremony itself is taking place there. For a wedding in the cathedral the parish’s own rules apply, and we get those in writing beforehand.