I come from press photography, and I kept its way of looking. Paris is the city where I learned this trade, and where I practised it for fifteen years.

I started in fashion photography studios, where you learn light before anything else. Then the press, the agencies, the magazines. Weddings slipped in among all of that, over five years, before I went back to the south I come from.

The Paris I know

I photographed this city for years for the magazine Paris Absolument. That kind of work forces you out of the postcards.

The narrow streets above the crowds in Montmartre, the vines that still grow inside Paris, the covered arcades and their glass roofs, the trellised bistros the guidebooks miss, the Buttes-Chaumont and its bridges, the cobbles of Montparnasse, the banks of the Canal Saint-Martin, the Place de la Bastille, the quiet steps of the Île de la Cité down at water level. And all those small parks that stay off the usual routes.

The Eiffel Tower and the Carrousel du Louvre exist, of course. They are photographed a thousand times a day, and most of the grandest settings require permission in advance. I prefer the places where you can walk, sit down and talk.

What I photograph in Paris

The full wedding, from morning until the end of the evening, in the same documentary approach I use everywhere.

The elopement, a ceremony for two or with a handful of close friends. Paris suits it particularly well: everything fits into one day, the distances are short, and the city supplies its own setting.

The couple session on its own, the day before the wedding or the day after, for couples marrying elsewhere who want Paris pictures. It happens on foot, or on the water, the Seine offering a view the embankment never gives.

Paris light

It has little in common with the light of the south, and that is what makes it interesting.

The sky is often overcast, which gives a diffused, even light where the south makes you work around a hard sun. A grey Paris sky is a softbox several kilometres wide: faces are modelled without cast shadow, and colour holds true from morning to night.

Paris in winter, which many couples avoid, gives short days but a low raking light from the middle of the afternoon. It is the season when cut stone looks its best.

A couple travelling from far away almost always comes through Paris

Some spend two days there before heading south to Provence, some marry in Paris and continue elsewhere, and some come back for a couple session once the date has passed.

Those are the couples I photograph here, with the same eye from Paris to the lavender fields and the Mediterranean shore.

Working with your planner

I work with Paris-based and international planners, and it is often through them that couples travelling from abroad find me.

What that changes for you: the shape of the day is prepared before you arrive, the venues are scouted without you, and by the time the day comes everything is already in place.

As a pair, and on film

For days that call for two sets of eyes, I work with Lonata. For days that call for a film as well, with Julien.

Frequently asked

Do you need permission to photograph in Paris? For a handheld reportage, in daylight, in public space, no paperwork is needed. It becomes necessary as soon as a tripod, lighting or a closure of public space is involved, with fifteen working days' notice. Monuments, gardens and privately owned public spaces each have their own rules, and some charge a fee. We choose according to what is workable on your date.

How far ahead should we book? Couples coming from abroad usually book more than a year ahead, the time it takes to settle flights and venues. For a couple session alone, a few weeks is often enough.

Can we combine Paris and the French Riviera? That is the arrangement that makes most sense for a couple travelling from far away: a session in Paris, then the wedding in the south, with nothing changing in between. We build the plan together.

Where does the couple session happen? Wherever you like, and I am glad to take you somewhere you would rarely go on your own. We settle it in conversation, around what you love and the hours we have.

Do you work with wedding planners? Regularly. A planner can write to me directly to talk through a date.

Tell me about your day, and we will work out together how it is photographed.

Lawrence Banahan, documentary wedding photographer in Paris and on the French Riviera. 165 rue d'Alésia, Paris 14e.