A place in Munich
The Hofgarten and its arcades.
The place you can photograph at midday when the sun is straight overhead everywhere else. The arcades take the hard light away and give you a receding line that orders every frame by itself.
What the place gives you
The arcades are a row of identical arches, and that is exactly their value: they repeat, and the eye follows them. Anyone standing in them is standing correctly by default — you only have to put them there and wait until they stop posing.
Then there are the colonnades, the columns and the short walk to Odeonsplatz. Within a few hundred metres you have four or five backgrounds with nothing in common. That is why a city tour starts here rather than somewhere green.
When the light is right
Almost always. That is rare for a Munich location and the real reason for this page. Under the arches the light is diffused and soft while outside the midday sun flattens everything. At the edge of the arcades this produces a gradient from bright to dark that you do not have to build.
It is still at its finest in the late afternoon, when the sun comes in low through the openings and lays stripes across the floor. That is a short window, and I plan the running order around it if it matters to you.
How a session here runs
The Hofgarten is the beginning of a city tour, not the end of it. Two hours, three or four places, all on foot. What happens in between is often better than what was planned at the places themselves — which is why I photograph on the way as much as at the destination.
If you are unsure how to move in front of a camera: you do not have to be. The first ten minutes do not count, and after them most people forget I am there.
What you should know
Here too I photograph in the freely accessible areas, without any set-up. Nothing to register, nothing to pay.
It is a public garden and there are always people about. That is part of it and does not spoil the pictures — at a wide aperture the background comes down to shape and light anyway.
Photographs taken there
If this is the place you have in mind, let us talk it through.
Fifteen minutes on the phone is enough to work out whether the place suits your occasion and when we should be there. After that you get a firm quote within 24 hours.
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