Lonely tree in lavander
- 📍 Location: Plateau de Valensole, Provence, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
Same plateau, opposite hour. The sun had dropped behind the tree and set the whole sky alight in gold and amber, and the lavender in front of me had gone dark and almost violet-black, holding only a rim of warm light along the top of each row.
I stood in the furrow again and let the rows converge on the tree, but this time the exposure is set for the sky. The field loses most of its colour and becomes texture and shape, and the picture divides into a brilliant upper half and a deep lower one.
The tree is a silhouette with its crown catching fire at the edges. Placing it slightly off centre and low leaves room for the sky to do its work; centred and large, it would have become a portrait of a tree rather than a landscape with one in it.
These fields are cut in July and for two weeks before that the plateau smells so strongly you can find your way across it in the dark. Photographing lavender is mostly an exercise in not being seduced, and at that hour it is very hard not to be.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
