Fade into lavender
- 📍 Location: Plateau de Valensole, Provence, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
The rows run dead straight from the bottom of the frame to a single tree on the horizon, and there is nothing else. I stood exactly in the axis of one furrow, because half a metre to either side and the lines stop converging on the tree and start sliding past it.
The treatment is deliberately high key. I let the sky go pale lilac, let the far rows lose their edges into haze, and kept real density only in the nearest lavender. The picture fades as it recedes, which is what the title is about and what the eye actually does on that plateau in the heat.
Purple against purple is a difficult picture to hold together — there is no complementary colour anywhere to push against. The tree does that job on its own: one dark mass, off centre, and the whole composition acquires a point.
Valensole in July is photographed by thousands of people, and I spent a long time looking for a way in that was not the standard postcard. Reducing it to three elements — the furrow, the haze, the tree — was the only version that felt like mine.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
