Couple photographer at the Eiffel Tower

One hour starts at €399 and two hours at €599 on digital, and the rate is the same here as anywhere else in Paris. That covers the planning, the location guide, the outfit guide, the session itself and a private online gallery of individually edited high-resolution images. Film is added on top. A proposal is its own thing and starts at €599. Weddings are quoted individually, from €3,499, and are handled on the wedding page rather than this one. Every combination is laid out on the pricing page.

Sunrise, by a clear margin. At first light the Trocadéro esplanade is close to empty and the Avenue de Camoëns stays quiet even longer. It does mean an early alarm, and sunrise moves a long way through the year, from around 8:45 in December to around 5:50 in June, which is why the start time is one of the things settled well in advance. Sunset works too: we simply shift the session towards Bir-Hakeim and the quays, which handle an evening crowd far better than the esplanade. After dark the Tower is lit, which is a different session again: my Eiffel Tower night photoshoot article follows one along the Seine, from Pont Alexandre III to Passerelle Debilly.

Four, all within a walk of each other. The Trocadéro esplanade for the full frontal view across the Seine. The staircase of the Avenue de Camoëns for the same axis without the crowd. The lower deck of the Pont de Bir-Hakeim for its metal columns. And the Quais de Seine down at the water, where the Tower stands straight up out of the river behind you. You pick two or three from the guide I send once you book, and I build the route around what you chose.

From mid-morning, yes: it is one of the busiest viewpoints in Europe. That is why the order of the route matters more than the route itself. The esplanade goes first, at sunrise, while it is near empty, and the quieter spots come afterwards as the day fills up. Done in that order you barely notice the crowds. Done the other way round you spend your session waiting for gaps.

It is the most requested proposal spot in Paris and I photograph a lot of them. My favourite setting for it is the Quais de Seine at the foot of the Tower rather than the esplanade: far fewer onlookers, and the Tower in full view behind you. I stay out of sight until the moment, photograph it as it happens, then step in and we carry on with a full session. How the whole thing gets planned, including how to get someone to the right spot at the right time without giving it away, is on the proposal photographer page.

Yes, and it is one of the two or three places people ask for most once they are engaged. It usually happens somewhere in the months between the yes and the wedding, which is a stretch of time when almost everything the two of you do together is a decision about the wedding. This is the part that is not. The engagement session page covers how they work, including for the many couples whose wedding is happening nowhere near Paris.

The wedding day itself is a different job with a great deal more behind it, and it lives on its own page: wedding photographer in Paris. Elopements too. What this page is for is everything either side of that day. An engagement session in the months before it, and a couple session after it, whether that is the morning after, the honeymoon, or the two of you back in Paris for an anniversary years later.

A couple session, and it is one of the nicest reasons to do one. Some couples want the same frames they took on their wedding trip and some deliberately want nothing like them, and both work here: the four settings around the Tower look quite different from each other, so we can repeat a photograph or avoid one on purpose. Tell me which when you book and I will build the route for it.

Plenty of couples do, either the morning after the wedding or on a trip back years later. It is still a couple session, so nothing changes about the booking. Two practical things: a long dress behaves differently on the Camoëns staircase and on the cobbles down at the water, and the earlier we start the fewer people there are to walk around you. Both of those go in the recap the day before, and the outfit guide covers the rest.

One hour covers one setting properly, or two that are close together, and it is what most couples book. Two hours lets us walk the whole route, from the Camoëns staircase to the water, and slow down at each stop. If you want the esplanade and the quays both, take two: they sit at opposite ends of the walk, and rushing between them is the one thing that makes a session feel like a schedule.

You get an outfit guide before the session, as a PDF, covering colour, fabric, layers and shoes, and what changes with the season you are travelling in. Two things are specific to here: the top of the Camoëns steps and the esplanade are both exposed and windier than they look, and the quays are cobbled. Once you have narrowed it down, send me photographs of the options and I will tell you which one I would rather photograph.

We photograph anyway, and it is often better. Overcast light is soft and even, the iron of the Eiffel Tower reads beautifully against a flat sky, and a wet esplanade gives you reflections a dry morning cannot. The crowds thin out as well. The wet-weather version of your session is settled in the recap the day before, so it is a decision already made rather than one taken at six in the morning. If a real storm is forecast, we move the session.

The digital gallery arrives within a week, usually while you are still travelling. If you have added film, it is developed and scanned here in Paris and follows about a week after that. Everything is individually edited by me and delivered in a private online gallery you can share with family, at full resolution, with prints ordered straight from it.

Yes, and French. Most of the couples I photograph don't live in France, so the whole thing is built for people arriving from somewhere else, down to the meeting points and the timings. You have my phone number from the moment you book and you are welcome to use it, whether the question is about the session or about what to do with the two hours after it.