Eiffel Tower at Night: Best Tips & Ideas For Photographing

Make the most of your time photographing the Eiffel Tower at night with the best locations, ideas and tips.

I kind of fell in love with the Eiffel Tower – clichéd much?

I didn’t expect to. You can see it from pretty much everywhere in the city – it sticks out and not in a very nice way. During the day, it’s this horrible brown colour which only gets worse as you get close enough to stand under the glorified pylon – a very large one at that. ‘Is this it?’ I thought to myself, ‘What’s the fuss?’

But all those feelings changed at night, the Eiffel Tower is transformed into a shinning beacon of light against a navy blue backdrop. I arrived at the Eiffel Tower at around 6pm and I was still there at midnight. Shooting the Eiffel Tower has been the most fun I’ve had taking pictures of a single landmark by far. There are lots of different angles and interesting things to layer the shot with. Hopefully you’ll gain some ideas and tips on how to photograph the Eiffel Tower by showing you my pictures.

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Trocadero Gardens

My absolute favourite place to take photos of the Eiffel Tower at night has to be from the top of Trocadero Gardens. For me, it’s the best place to take a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Constantly buzzing with people during the day and night, I tried to capture this using a 25 second shutter time for long exposure to produce some ghostly figures amongst those posing for pictures. The odd, bright and colourful lights you see around the people were some sort of toy light offered by the hoard of sellers.

I love these black and white shots as it emphasises how the Eiffel Tower seemed to glow against the dark night sky and the silhouettes give the people even more ‘spookiness’. At the top of the Eiffel Tower was this almost lighthouse-esque beacon which pierced the sky – turning this photo black and white captures it’s reach perfectly.

Merry-go round

There are two merry-go rounds, one in front of Trocadero Gardens and the other just a stone’s throw away from the Eiffel Tower, that were perfect for layering my shots. Again, using a slower shutter speed, I was able to capture the wonderful lights whilst in full spinning motion.

Underneath the Eiffel Tower

I dislike the Eiffel Tower’s brown colour that much I had to turn this photo into black and white! What I do love is the symmetry and the whispy clouds in the background.

Parc du Champ de Mars

The never ending walk to the end of the Parc du Champ de Mars past the Eiffel Tower is worth it. Groups of people come and set up camp into the wee small hours of the morning – you can see how worn out the grass is. Huge manicured square bushes line either side of the grass. I just managed to catch the flare on the left hand side whilst capturing how busy the Parc du Champ de Mars can be.

Trocadero Gardens provides many objects and items to include in the foreground, not to mention people – it’s extremely busy. This guy was obviously a bit fed up of being asked if he wanted five small Eiffel Tower key rings for €1 by the many sellers… The water feature in Trocadero Gardens has two stone statues simply titled L’homme and La Femme, simply translated as ‘a man’ and ‘a woman’. Every hour on the hour after sunset, the Eiffel Tower puts on a light display in bursts of ten minutes. Like a million bulbs bursting, I just about managed to capture it in action.

And just in front of Trocadero Gardens, I captured the street lights which lead the way to the tower on Pont d’lena. You can see cars come and go along the bridge, including a taxi which unhelpfully decided to stop as I tried to capture a long exposure shot! But I actually quite like the red light on its roof.

Like this post? Check out my tips on the best views above Paris that aren’t from the Eiffer Tower and my photo gallery of Paris!