Wedding photographer in Hyères

A day in Hyères is built as a route. The town, the Almanarre and Giens are three different terrains, and moving from one to the next means having decided the order and the hours in advance.

I come from press photography, and I never really left it. A day in Hyères is built as a route, the town, the Almanarre and Giens, and a route is exactly what a press photographer knows how to follow.

Three places, three ways of working

Castel Bay is a reception property with a three hectare park, looking out over the bay of the Almanarre and the Giens peninsula. The depth of the park lets a reception move from one space to another without anyone getting into a car, which counts for more here than elsewhere.

Domaine du Viet is the other wedding venue in the commune where I work.

In the Hyères countryside, the Magnanerie de Saint-Isidore with its silk-mill vaults, then the Château des Anglades with its avenue of palms, complete the places I keep coming back to. Between Hyères and Toulon, the Domaine de la Baratonne, at La Garde, and the Domaine de Sigalous, at La Crau, play the same part, and further east, at La Londe-les-Maures, the Château Pas du Cerf looks as much towards Hyères as towards Toulon.

Domaine de la Presqu'île de Giens is a vineyard of small, steep plots facing south, looking straight out at the Mediterranean. The relief cuts the ground into terraces, and those terraces change the background every twenty metres.

Around them, Port Auguier, the Madrague, the pines and the coves give a couple session its landmarks, provided they have been scouted before the day.

What the couple actually lives through

You leave the town late in the morning, cross the Almanarre, and the sea appears on both sides of the road as you come onto Giens. The landscape changes three times in twenty minutes. In the evening, from the park at Castel Bay, the peninsula turns into a dark line on the horizon while the light drops behind it. Those are the images you will still be looking at in ten years, and they cannot be ordered: they arrive once, at a precise hour.

The light, from one end of the commune to the other

It does not behave the same way depending on where you stand.

At Castel Bay, the end of the day is the decisive moment. The sun goes down behind the peninsula, the bay turns into backlight, and faces are worked by using the soft return off the water rather than fighting it.

On the peninsula, the light is far more direct. The settings change very fast between the pines, which filter it, and the openings onto the sea, which send it back whole. Moving between the two means adjusting each time, and that is also what produces very different images within a short perimeter.

Should several places be planned in one day?

That is decided when the schedule is set, rather than on the day itself. The town, the Almanarre and Giens form a single axis, and every move is paid for in minutes on one road. Two places in a day hold without strain. Three mean accepting that the couple session happens during the transfer.

How is access prepared?

Beforehand, with the venue. The Giens properties and the approaches to the coves each have their own parking and passage constraints. I see them before the wedding day, so that there is nothing left to think about during the reportage.

Forty minutes along the coast road, Sainte-Maxime is the one shore of the gulf where the sun sets on the water.

Frequently asked questions

What sets a wedding in Hyères apart from elsewhere on the coast? The commune holds three distinct terrains on one axis: the town, the Almanarre and the Giens peninsula. A day here is built as a route, with an order and hours decided in advance, where other communes hold on a single site.

What does the park at Castel Bay allow? Three hectares looking over the bay of the Almanarre and the Giens peninsula. The depth of the park lets a reception move from one space to another without driving, and the end of the day gives a backlight across the bay that few venues offer.

Does the Giens vineyard photograph like a classic estate? Its plots are small, steep and south facing, straight out towards the Mediterranean. The relief cuts the ground into terraces, which changes the background every twenty metres and gives a lot of variety over a small area.

When is the light at its best? At Castel Bay, at the end of the day, when the sun drops behind the peninsula and the bay turns to backlight. On Giens the light stays direct for longer, and it is the pines that provide the usable areas through the middle of the day.

How is travel from Cannes settled? The office is in Cannes and I work along the whole coast. The terms are set in the quote, together with the schedule for the day, and then written into the contract.

To the west, Toulon sets another rhythm around its roadstead. What the French Riviera asks everywhere, margin on the journeys and the trade-off of the last hour, applies here too. Inland, Provence opens onto the estates and onto a more filtered light.

Tell me the date and the place, and we will look at how the day photographs.