Bavaria
Munich has one subject no other German city has, and it is temperamental. In a Föhn the Alpine chain stands sharp on the southern horizon; on the other three hundred days it is not there. From the Olympiaberg and the Monopteros in the Englischer Garten that is the difference between a postcard and a grey band, and because a Föhn shows up in the forecast two or three days out it is the one booking on this site made at short notice rather than long. Everything else here is water and park. The Englischer Garten is larger than Central Park, the Isar runs re-naturalised for twelve kilometres inside the city and has gravel banks you stand on in August as though you were in the mountains. What costs money is the palaces: Nymphenburg and the Residenz belong to the Bavarian palace administration, and a commercial photograph in either needs permission and carries a fee. The park at Nymphenburg is free and the courtyard is not — a distinction that only becomes apparent once you are standing in it.
The Föhn days cluster in spring and late autumn, not in summer. October is the city’s best month: clear air, colour in the Englischer Garten, and the two weeks of the Wiesn when any appointment in the centre is better avoided. From mid-June to the end of August the Isar gravel banks are where Munich looks like a holiday. January and February are cold and often under high fog — and that fog is not a washout but the softest light of the year.
Here is where to shoot in Munich, with ideal times and permit notes.
A rubble hill from the war, sixty metres above the plain, and the only point from which the city and the Alpine chain fall into one frame. On a clear October evening half of Munich is up there; on the others you have it to yourself.
The Eisbach wave is the one Munich subject that moves, and it runs around the clock. The Monopteros two hundred metres on gives the view south across the meadow to the towers of the old town — empty in the morning, a picnic ground from eleven.
The canal axis in front of the palace is five hundred metres of symmetry and nearly photographs itself. The park behind is laid out in the English manner and far less walked — for a wedding report it is the actual destination, not the facade.
Turquoise meltwater, white gravel and pines, five minutes from the centre. In high summer it is busy, but the banks are long enough that two hundred metres upstream you are alone.
The market gives colour and movement; the Asamkirche two hundred metres on gives the opposite — a baroque interior eight metres wide in which three people are already a crowd. Together they make a session that does not look like a postcard.
These come under the Munich rate: a photographer travels out from the city at no extra charge, and the session is priced exactly as it would be in Munich itself.
You cannot plan on it, but you can wait for it. The Alpine view depends on a Föhn, which shows in the forecast two or three days ahead. If it matters, book a flexible slot and we fix the date at short notice — this is the one session on the site that works that way round. Without a Föhn the Olympiaberg is still the best view over the city.
It depends on scale and area and is set case by case by the Bavarian palace administration; an hour in the courtyard runs to a low three-figure sum. The public palace park is not affected. We obtain the permit and invoice the fee separately rather than burying it in a package price.
For anything in the centre, yes. For a fortnight the hotels are full, the trams are full and the area between the Hauptbahnhof and the Theresienwiese is effectively unusable. The Englischer Garten and Nymphenburg are barely affected — and anyone who wants a Tracht session on the Wiesn gets, in exactly those two weeks, something that does not exist the rest of the year.