Book a Engagement Photoshoot
in Fontainebleau

For Paris in spring and early summer, and for Provence during lavender season (late June to mid-July), book 4-8 weeks ahead — these are peak dates and the best photographers' calendars fill early. The Loire, Alsace and the Riviera outside August are more flexible; two to three weeks is usually enough. If your dates are fixed (say, you're combining the shoot with a wedding scouting trip), book as soon as you know them — you can always fine-tune the time and locations later in the chat with your photographer. Last-minute requests are still worth trying: Photo France can often match you with an available photographer within days.

Yes — that's one of the most popular reasons couples book an engagement session. You receive high-resolution files with personal usage rights, perfect for printed cards, wedding websites, guest apps and social media announcements. Tell your photographer in advance that save-the-dates are the goal: they'll deliberately shoot some wider compositions with negative space for text, a mix of portrait and landscape orientations, and a few images that work at small print sizes. The two of you small against the Eiffel Tower at dawn, or framed by a lavender row in Gordes, makes an announcement nobody forgets. Delivery is typically within days, so the cards can go out quickly.

Practically, they're the same product — same duration, same pricing from €299, same photographer pool. The difference is intent. An engagement session usually has deliverables in mind: save-the-dates, a wedding website, images that match the aesthetic of your upcoming wedding. Your photographer will plan for that — cleaner compositions, ring details, perhaps echoing the color palette of your wedding venue. A couples session is freer: it documents your trip and your relationship as they are, with more candid wandering. Tell us which one you mean when booking and the session gets planned accordingly; plenty of couples honestly book it as both.

Professional photoshoots in Fontainebleau start from €310. Packages vary by duration and the number of edited photos, roughly €310 to €450 for one to two hours — the horseshoe staircase and the gardens in the short version, or a longer session that drives out to the forest boulders or Vaux-le-Vicomte.

The horseshoe staircase in the Cour du Cheval Blanc, the Jardin de Diane with its bronze fountain under old plane trees, Le Nôtre's Grand Parterre and the Grand Canal behind it, the sandstone boulders and open heath at the Gorges d'Apremont in the forest, and the moated façade and parterres of Vaux-le-Vicomte to the north.

The gardens open before the château does, so the first hour gives the staircase and the parterres without visitors, and low sun from the east lights the façade. Evening suits the forest, where the sandstone goes orange. Autumn is the strongest season: the beech and oak turn, and the heath around the boulders goes russet.