Café Imperial photography

Probably very few people do not know Zdeněk Pohlreich's Café Imperial. Every time we shoot for the Imperial Hotel or the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Prague, we stop by one of his restaurants and have never left disappointed. The current state of emergency has affected most of my clients and I have had to watch one decision affect everyone and there is nothing I can do about it. But some have taken the plunge and gone into renovations and upgrading their presentation. So one day I got a phone call from Mr. Pohlreich's office saying they needed to re-shoot Café Imperial and if I was interested.

Photographing restaurants and overall establishments is complicated by the fact that they tend to be busy. And when it's not, it's most likely closed and dark. Which is fine for night photography, but we're out of luck with daytime photography. But when restaurants are closed by government decree, that problem goes away. We took advantage of this and spent an afternoon and evening there a few days before opening. The result is both day and night photos and one short social media video.

Details

The goal was to shoot both day and night photographs to capture how light transforms the restaurant space from a bright environment dominated by giant windows, letting in a lot of light into the cozy, chandelier-lit, romantic environment that the space becomes after sunset.