Yellow fields
- 📍 Location: Les Petites Rivières, Le Vésinet, Yvelines, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
The meadow had been left unmown and the buttercups had taken all of it, right up to the line of trees at the top. One pine leans out over the grass, and a few darker conifers stand behind it.
I framed upright with the flowers filling two thirds of the picture from the bottom edge up. The horizon is high on purpose — this is about the extent of the yellow, and giving the sky any real room would have made it a landscape with a field in it rather than a field with a sky above it.
The light was soft and slightly overcast, which is the only way to photograph a mass of small reflective flowers. Direct sun turns a meadow like this into thousands of specular highlights and the colour goes to white.
This lasts a few weeks and depends entirely on somebody deciding not to cut the grass. Whole photographs exist because of a decision made by a municipal maintenance schedule, which I find a useful thing to remember.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
