Purple sunrise
- 📍 Location: Plateau de Valensole, Provence, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
First light on the plateau, with mist still lying between the rows and the sky a pale wash of pink and lilac. A small stone building sits on the crest with one cypress beside it, and the lavender runs up to both.
I framed with the building on the upper third and the rows converging on it from the bottom of the picture. The cypress is what saves the composition from being symmetrical — one dark vertical, offset, breaking a scene that would otherwise be entirely made of horizontals and diagonals.
The colours are soft because the light was soft, and I kept the whole image in a narrow range of pinks, lilacs and dusty greens. This is the hour before the plateau turns hard and saturated; I prefer it, and it is worth getting up for.
By eight in the morning in July there are cars along every track here. The difference between this frame and a crowded one is about forty minutes, and those forty minutes are most of what a landscape photographer actually does for a living.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
