Couple photographer on the Quais de Seine

One hour starts at €399 and two hours at €599 on digital, and the rate is the same on the quays 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.

The river is the most flexible location I photograph, so the honest answer is that almost any hour works. Sunrise and sunset are still the best of it, especially in summer, when the quays are emptier and the light comes in low along the water. But if the only free slot in your trip is the middle of the day, this is where I would put it: the lower level keeps its own light and stays calm when the streets above are full.

My favourites: Pont Marie and Pont de la Tournelle on the eastern side, with Notre-Dame rising behind you; the quiet Quai de Bourbon on Île Saint-Louis; Pont Alexandre III for the lampposts and the Grand Palais; and the cobbled bank at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. The eastern ones sit together and make one session. Alexandre III and the Tower are their own, further west, and after dark they make a walk of their own: my night photoshoot along the Seine goes from Pont Alexandre III to the Tower in an hour.

Easily, and it is the main reason people choose the river. From the eastern quays we can walk up into Le Marais or across to Notre-Dame, and follow the water west to the Louvre and the Tuileries. Two hours comfortably covers the river plus one neighbour. What does not work is trying to reach the Eiffel Tower from the islands on foot.

This is the location I would actively choose in the rain. Wet stone throws back every light on the river, the bridges give you cover to stand under, and the quays empty out entirely. Some of my favourite photographs along the Seine were made in weather nobody would have picked. The wet-weather version is settled in the recap the day before, so it is not a decision taken on the morning. If a real storm is forecast, we move the session.

Frequently, and if you want the moment to happen without strangers watching it, the lower quays are the best answer in Paris. A staircase down and a stretch of stone with nobody on it does more for a proposal than any famous view. 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 river 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 is also the easiest place to add a second backdrop, since the quays connect most of central Paris on foot. 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 river 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 river makes both straightforward: the same bridge is still there, and there are a dozen others within a walk if you would rather it looked nothing like last time. 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 things are specific to the water: the stone is uneven and often wet, and it is noticeably colder down there than on the street, so a coat between frames is worth carrying from autumn onwards. All of it goes in the recap the day before, and the outfit guide covers the rest.

One hour covers one stretch of quay properly, two bridges and a staircase down to the water, and it is what most couples book. Two hours lets us cross the islands, take in Notre-Dame and finish somewhere completely different from where we started. What two hours will not do is get you from the eastern islands to the Eiffel Tower, which is a separate session.

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. On the quays, shoes and a layer are the two that matter: the stone is uneven and damp, and the water level is several degrees colder than 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.