Rathaus Subway Station view from Top-Down Escalator

The image was taken from the top-down escalator at the Rathaus Subway Station. When arriving by subway, take the stairs up one level where you'll end up in a level below the subway exit. There are two ways out and you want to take the one from where you can look down at these stairs. The other exit is surrounded by regular blue walls. Before actually leaving the subway station by taking the last set of stairs, you'll stand at the exact location I took this photograph (reference the GPS). It might take you a moment to figure out the 90 degree rotation but that's half the fun when taking these kind of creative pictures! By Metro: - Closest Station: Rathaus (Line 5)

The Rathaus Subway Station is accessible year round and not affected by weather.

You can visit during any time. When I took the photo, I was completely underground and there wasn't any light coming in to affect my shot. Luckily, this subway station is normally very empty most of the time since there's only one line to take and locals don't really need it.

For this kind of perspective, you'll need an ultra wide lens. I used my 12mm for the widest view I could get. An ultra-wide lens is why the top third and the lower third of the image has this black and white pattern instead of just having the stairs with a regular lens.

When composing your image, you want to consider the 90 degrees rotation of the image in post-processing. Since the final image is in portrait mode, I shot this image holding the camera in landscape mode. This is a very important step for perspective twists! You don't want to have to crop your image due to the aspect ratio.

It can be quite challenging to get your model into a natural pose since your model is actually laying down flat on the ground with their feet against the wall. One tip I can give you is to make sure your model's arms are angled and spread apart. One leg should be almost straight. Also, Make sure your model doesn't lean forward with their upper body. I recommend taking a lot of shots, then checking them and adjusting their posture step by step. My model did this for the very first time and if you communicate clearly which body part to move where it makes his/her job much easier and less awkward.

There's another stunningly modern, yet empty, subway station nearby. Walk toward Heumarkt and enjoy Cologne's spaceship subway station (which is how I refer to it at least!).

For a more touristic approach, walk along the several little streets in the neighborhood to get a feeling of what Cologne looked like a century ago, before it had to be rebuilt in many parts of the city.