For visiting crews & corporate productions
Location scouting and shoot support in Prague
You have a few days, a crew, and a city you have never worked in. I have photographed Prague for over a decade and I know where the shot is before we leave the hotel.
I find the locations, walk them with you, and stay for the shoot.
How it works
Briefing
You tell me what has to be in frame and what the film has to feel like. The last brief I took was one sentence about a quiet street with paving stones and a big glass shopfront that still had to read as Prague. That is enough to work from.
A shortlist, not a list
I come back with specific places and why each one works — the orientation that holds up, the hour the light is right, what is under construction and what is closed. Options you can rule in or out, not a folder of pretty pictures.
We walk it
We go into the city and stand in the places, so the decisions get made before there is a crew waiting. This is where most of the shooting days get saved.
I stay for the shoot
If it is useful, I am there when you start. Keeping an eye out so nobody interrupts the take, moving the unit between locations so no one stands around, and a second option ready for the moment a location does not behave the way it did on the recce.
What this is, and what it isn't
Worth being blunt about, because booking the wrong thing costs you more than not booking at all.
What you get
- Location proposals built around your brief, with the hour each one works
- A recce on foot, together, before the crew is standing around
- Someone local on set who speaks Czech and English
- Transport and timings between locations so the day keeps moving
- A second option ready when a location doesn't work on the day
What you don't
- Filming permits and municipal paperwork
- Crew, casting, or talent booking
- Camera, lighting, or grip rental
- Line producing, budgets, or insurance
- Post-production, and no licence to my own images
That list is a production service, and Prague has established companies who do it properly. If your shoot needs it, hire one of them. This is the smaller, earlier job.
Who books this
Small crews arriving from abroad. In-house teams shooting their own brand film. Corporate productions where the director flew in, the models are booked, and nobody on the call sheet has stood in Prague before.
The last one was an American production shooting a commercial over three days. Four days of filming, in a city the director had never visited. He got what he needed; I cannot picture him finding all of it alone in the time he had.
Why a photographer and not a producer
A producer can tell you a location exists and can be cleared. That is a different skill from knowing how the light sits on it at seven in the morning, which way the street reads on a long lens, and which famous view has been behind scaffolding since spring.
I am a Prague-based travel photographer published in National Geographic Traveller, Lonely Planet and Wanderlust. I have photographed this city for over a decade and wrote the guide to shooting it that people keep finding. On your shoot none of that is the point — you are the author, your name is on the film and mine is not. It just means the shortlist you get is made of frames somebody has already stood in.
Questions people ask first
- Are you a fixer or a production service?
- No, and it matters that you know before you book. I do not pull permits, hire crew, rent equipment, or line produce. Prague has established companies that do all of that well. What I do sits earlier and is smaller: knowing where the shot is, and being useful once the camera is up.
- Do you shoot the job as well?
- Usually not. On a scouting and support booking the images are yours and my name is nowhere on them. If you want photographs made by me instead, that is a commercial commission and it is priced differently.
- How far in advance do you need?
- The last one reached me on a Friday evening for a Monday arrival, and it worked. Short notice is workable when I am in the country, but I lead photo tours abroad for a good part of the year — so the honest answer is to ask as early as you can, and ask anyway if you cannot.
- What does it cost?
- From €700 a day, quoted per project once I know the shoot days and how much of them you want me on. No post-production and no image licensing are included, because neither is what you are buying.
- Do you work outside Prague?
- Prague and the area immediately around it, and that is the honest limit. Everything you are buying here rests on knowing a place well enough to picture the light on it before you get there, and that does not travel. Further afield you want somebody whose home city it is.
- Why not just use a location library?
- A library tells you a place exists. It does not tell you that the light turns the wrong way there at four in the afternoon, that the square fills with tour groups at ten, or that the shot you have drawn is standing behind scaffolding this season. That is the part that costs you a shooting day.
Tell me what you're shooting
Dates, how many shooting days, and roughly what has to be in frame. One paragraph is plenty — the last booking started with a good deal less. From €700 a day, in Prague and the area around it. I reply within 48 hours, and I will tell you straight away if you would be better off with a full production service.
Get in touch