Photographing the Eiffel Tower
I spent seven days in Paris. Not nearly enough time to give you a comprehensive list of the best and worst locations for photos. However, based on what I did and saw, I’ll do my best to help you find some cool photo locations if you’re only going for a short time like I was… Some of the locations may be obvious, some may not be. Even so, I’m able to save you a little time if you’re ever in Paris with a camera.
In this article, I’ll try and give you some tips on shooting the most famous Paris location of them all: the Eiffel Tower.
Shooting from The Trocadéro
In my opinion, the best place from which to shoot the Eiffel Tower is across the Seine at The Trocadéro (pictured right). Unfortunately, the fountains were not on during our week in Paris but, had they been, I’m sure I would have enjoyed the shots even more. We shot the Eiffel Tower from here on a Monday, once in the noon/afternoon time frame and once in the evening. While the top level was full of kids, the levels closest to the fountains were fairly empty, allowing me to set up my tripod dead center without many people getting in the way. Some of my favorite Tower photos came from this location:
At night, before you cross back over the Pont d’Iena bridge, head down the steps toward the Seine for some cool night shots of the bridge and the Tower:
Shooting from Parc du Champs de Mars
The other side of the Eiffel Tower, in the Parc du Champs de Mars also presents some interesting photo opportunities… There are quite a few dirt and gravel paths on either side of the main grassy area, allowing you to shoot the Eiffel Tower with trees, lamp posts, flowers, and park benches in the foreground. The combinations of potential shots is limitless. One of my favorites from this area is below:
NOTE: Shooting from the Parc du Champs de Mars at night also has incredible possibilities. However, the paths can be dark and they feel “secluded”. As such, you may have undesirables or just plain old crazy people wandering through the area. We were confronted by one such aromatic fellow and it ultimately prevented me from getting some cool night shots from here. Beware.
From the Top, Looking Down
If you’re going to go all the way to the Eiffel Tower, you simply have to go to the top. The elevators stay open until 11:00 at night, and until midnight during the summer. It will cost you a few Euros and perhaps some time waiting in line, but it is well worth the wait. From the top level, you’ll be able to see the entire city, including the Trocadéro, Hotel National des Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coeur, and even Notre Dame. Your best bet is to take a long lens. For most of my shots from the top of the tower, I used my 70-200mm lens. This helped me get in close enough to some of the other major landmarks for some decent aerial shots.
You will NOT be able to use your tripod inside the Tower but the good news is, the fence openings are wide enough that you should be able to easily stick your lens through them. I even managed to take advantage of my lens’ IS capability to get one three-shot panorama of the city:
Oh, How It Sparkles
Once an hour at night hundreds of tiny white lights on the Tower light up and sparkle brilliantly for ten minutes. This is definitely something to behold. Your best shot at photographing this, in my opinion, is to get up close, increase your ISO to 1600, decrease your shutter speed and snap. Since the lights are sparkling randomly very quickly, a long exposure is just going to make it look like all the lights are on at once. It might look cool to you but it just doesn’t look right to me. Example below:
See what I mean? Not bad, but it looks like the tower is “frosted”. Compare that to a handheld shot from up close at ISO 1600 and you get a much better look at the sparkling tower:
Of course, you can see the Eiffel Tower from all over the city which will give you a great opportunity to shoot it from anywhere. I found that, from a distance, the sparkling actually takes away from the tower, leaving it much too overexposed. But, give it a shot!
Also, at night, there is a large spotlight constantly circling at the top of the tower. To catch the spotlight in one place, you might want to try a shorter exposure. Or, you may be able to get a cool halo in a properly composed longer exposure. I was unable to get any good shots of the “halo” effect, but you can see the spotlight in the image below:
Stroll Down Avenue de la Bourdonnais
On the northeast side of the Parc du Champs de Mars is Avenue de la Bourdonnais. From this street, you can get some great shots of the Eiffel Tower over some old European-looking buildings. This was one of my favorite places as it gives you a perspective that you don’t often see in the gazillion photos of the Eiffel Tower that you’ve probably already seen. A couple examples below:
The Map
I’ve included an embedded map below with a marker on the locations I’ve described in this article.
View Larger Map
Also, feel free to browse my Eiffel Tower set on Flickr. Every single photo is geo-tagged so you will now exactly where I took the shot.
Conclusion
I hope I was able to give you some insight into photographing one of the most impressive structures ever to be caught on film. If you know of any other cool locations for shooting the Tower, I’d love to hear them!
Tags: eiffel-tower, france, paris, tips, travel
