Photographers across Germany

Germany has eighty cities with more than a hundred thousand residents. Listing all of them would be easy and would mean nothing: eighty pages differing in one proper noun are eighty pages nobody needs to read. A place appears here when there is something to say about it that genuinely changes how a session is planned.

That is rarely the same as a landmark. In Hamburg it is a question of latitude — six hours between December and June, and therefore an hour set by the month. In Cologne it is that the cathedral only fits a frame from the Deutz bank and only takes front light in the afternoon. In Stuttgart it is the basin, which cuts forty minutes off the golden hour. None of that is in a guidebook, and it is why these pages exist.

Eight of the twelve are cities people live and work in: weddings, christenings, first days of school, application photographs and trade-fair work sit there. Four are places people travel to — Heidelberg, Dresden, the Black Forest and Lake Constance — and there the weight shifts to couple sessions, humanist ceremonies and weddings that guests fly in for.

Every place page names five specific locations with their hour and their permit position, the seasonality across the year, and which services are actually asked for there. If your town is not on the list, ask anyway: the surrounding areas named on each page are covered with no travel charge.