Couple photographer on Île Saint-Louis

One hour starts at €399 and two hours at €599 on digital, and the rate is the same on the island 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, and here it matters more than the light. The island is residential, so at first light the street and the quays are genuinely empty and stay that way for an hour or two. In summer that means meeting around half past six. In winter the island stays quiet until mid-morning, so the alarm is far kinder. Overcast and rainy mornings work well too: fewer people again, and soft even light on the water.

Yes, and without a detour. From the stairs down to the Quai d'Orléans, the east end of Notre-Dame stands directly across the river, which is the view of the cathedral most people picture, taken from a spot with almost nobody in it. If you want to get closer, Pont Saint-Louis connects the two islands in a two-minute walk and we can finish the session at the cathedral itself.

My favourites: Place Louis Aragon at the western tip, where the river opens on both sides; the stone stairs down from the Quai d'Orléans to the water, facing Notre-Dame; rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île with its seventeenth-century façades; and Pont Saint-Louis, the little pedestrian bridge between the two islands. A single session covers all of them on foot in about fifteen minutes of actual walking.

Not before about ten, and that is the whole reason to come here. After that the central street fills with people walking through for the ice cream and the bridges towards Notre-Dame get busy. The quays on the outside of the island stay noticeably calmer all day, so even a late session has somewhere to go. The route is built around that order.

We photograph anyway, and the island is one of the better places for it. Rain empties the quays completely, wet stone throws back the light off the water, and the trees along the edges give you somewhere to stand. Overcast light is soft and even, which suits portraits. The wet-weather version is settled in the recap the day before, so it is not a decision taken at half past six in the morning. If a real storm is forecast, we move the session.

Frequently, and it is what I recommend to anyone who wants the moment to happen without an audience. The tip of the island at first light is about as private as central Paris gets, with water on two sides and somewhere to sit down straight afterwards. I stay out of sight until the moment, photograph it as it happens, then step in and we carry on with a full session. The planning is on the proposal photographer page.

Yes, and the island is one of the places people ask for most once they are engaged. It usually happens somewhere in the months between the yes and the wedding, 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. It also puts Notre-Dame in your photographs without putting a crowd in them, which is harder than it sounds. 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 on the island 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. The island barely changes from one decade to the next, which makes repeating a photograph unusually easy here. 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. One thing is specific here: the stairs down to the water are narrow, stone and often damp, so a long dress wants a hand and shoes you can manage them in. All of it goes in the recap the day before, and the outfit guide covers the rest.

One hour is genuinely enough here, and it is what most couples book, because the island is small and the four spots are minutes apart. Two hours is worth it if you want to carry on across Pont Saint-Louis and along the quays afterwards, or up into Le Marais, which is a ten-minute walk from the far end of the island.

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. Here the stairs to the water are the thing to plan around, and it is colder down at the river than up on the street. Send me photographs of the options and I will tell you which one I would rather photograph.

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.