La Croisette and the pistes at Courchevel 1850

La Croisette is the hub of Courchevel 1850 — the front of the lift station, the top of the road up from the valley, and the point where the pistes come off the mountain and finish at street level. That last part is what makes it work in a photograph: the snow is not somewhere above the village, it arrives in it, so you can stand at the edge of a road and have a mountain in the background.

Work the edges rather than the middle. The middle is buses, taxis and lift queues; fifty metres out on the snow, with the village stacked behind and the wooded slope beyond, you get a clean frame. Early morning before the lifts open is the good slot — the pistes are groomed and empty, the light comes over the eastern ridge, and the whole place is quiet in a way it never is again until dark.

Behind the Croisette the resort is a run of chalets, hotels and shops in wood and stone, floodlit after dark. Blue hour here is genuinely good: warm windows, snow holding the last blue, and the mountain still faintly visible.

In winter this is a busy commercial resort and you are working around it. Out of season, and particularly in summer, the same slopes are green and almost nobody uses them. Lift opening dates change every year, and in May and November most of the village is shut — check before fixing a date.