Tips from our photographers
Where the light falls, what the permits cost, which hour a place is still empty — written by the photographers who work these cities every week.
Three kinds of authority issue photography permits in this country and none of them talks to the others. Which one applies depends on who owns the ground you are standing on — and the answer can change twice in one afternoon.
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Almost every American market has one window of a few weeks that is better than the rest of its year, and in most cases it is not set by the weather. It is set by a bloom, a school deadline or a permit release date.
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Most American photography is quoted after a conversation, which means the number depends on what the photographer thinks you will pay. Here is what the figures actually are, and the four questions that tell you whether a quote is comparable.
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These are working notes rather than travel writing. Each one exists because the same question kept arriving in enquiries, and the answer was long enough to be worth writing down once: which direction a viewpoint faces, what a permit actually costs, which hour a place is still empty.
Several of them save real money. Photography permits in this country are issued per site rather than nationally, by authorities that do not coordinate: a municipal film office, a parks department and the National Park Service can all have a claim on the same afternoon. San Francisco alone has two entirely separate regimes, because the Golden Gate Bridge approaches are federal land and Alamo Square is not. Knowing that before you plan a morning around a location is worth more than any amount of advice about composition.
Others are about timing, which is the thing people most often get wrong and the thing that costs nothing to get right. The Texas bluebonnets are three weeks nobody can name in January. Mount Rainier’s meadows bloom for a fortnight. Haleakalā sunrise needs a reservation released exactly sixty days out. Washington Street in Brooklyn is finished by half past seven in July.
If your question is not answered here, ask it directly — the answer usually turns into the next article.