The guide
A hillside that people live on
The slopes are not a monument and were never designed to be looked at. They are a working hillside where silk was woven, built tall and narrow to fit looms, and they are now flats with washing on the balconies.
That is exactly why they photograph well. Nothing here has been arranged for visitors, so a photograph taken here looks like a place rather than like a backdrop, and the light between the buildings is doing something more interesting than an open square allows.
Working downhill
The single most useful piece of planning here is direction.
A session that starts at the top and works down covers three times the ground of one that starts at the bottom, and nobody arrives at the good frames red in the face. So we meet at the top — the plateau is easy to reach — and finish on the quays.
The stairs themselves are the subject as much as the route. The montée de la Grande-Côte and the smaller flights off it give you long receding lines that are impossible to find in the flat centre.
Living with the residents
This is somebody's street, in a way that the Vieux Lyon a few hundred metres away is not. Doorways are entrances rather than props, the traboules are private passages, and the goodwill of people who live here is the reason photographers are still tolerated.
We work fast, keep out of the way and do not photograph into windows. It is not a rule imposed on us; it is the condition on which the place stays usable.
What it suits
Couple sessions that want texture rather than grandeur, and studio portraits shot outdoors — the painted walls make backgrounds that a studio would have to build.
Families work here too, with the caveat about stairs. For anyone who cannot manage a climb, the Parc de la Tête d'Or is ten minutes away and completely level. Prices are on the rate card.