Photographer in Christianshavn, Copenhagen

The canal here is narrower than Nyhavn's and the buildings lower, so light reaches the water for more of the day and reflects up in a soft band that is very kind to faces. The palette is different too: instead of primary colours you get weathered timber, dark green paint, brick and rope — a muted, cinematic set of tones that suits a moodier edit and rarely dates.

The texture is the other reason I keep coming back. Cobbles, mooring rings, houseboat cabins, iron railings and the copper spiral of Vor Frelsers Kirke overhead all give you something real to lean on, sit on or walk along. Sessions where you are physically doing something almost always look more natural than sessions where you are standing and smiling.

We meet by the metro station and drop straight down to the canal. The first fifteen minutes are spent walking and shooting along the water, mostly candid, which is where the nerves go. Then we use the moored boats and the low quay wall for seated and leaning frames, and finish either in the cobbled lanes behind Overgaden or out on Krøyers Plads, where the harbour opens up and the sky becomes the background.

If you want the Vor Frelsers spiral in shot, tell me at booking — there are only two or three angles where it sits cleanly behind you rather than growing out of your head, and I plan the route around them.

This is a favourite for couple sessions, because privacy and slow walking are the two ingredients that make couples forget the camera. It also suits lifestyle photography — coffee, canal, cobbles, real life rather than landmarks — and gives visitors a version of travel photography in Copenhagen that looks like the city people actually live in.

It is a good fit for anyone who has looked at Nyhavn photos and thought they were beautiful but a little too obvious.