Lupines
- 📍 Location: Col du Lautaret, Hautes-Alpes, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
For a few weeks each summer the meadow at the col fills with lupines, and they grow tall enough that from low down they hide the ground completely. I framed with a bank of them across the whole foreground, spikes standing at eye level, and the slopes rising behind.
Vertical, and close. A wide lens a few centimetres from the nearest flower makes the spikes into architecture — a row of purple columns — while the peak beyond stays at its honest distance. The picture climbs from flower to grass to rock to sky in four clear steps.
The light is diffuse, filtered through high cloud, which is what saves it. Direct sun on lupines produces hard blue shadows and a great deal of glare; under a soft sky every spike keeps its gradient from deep violet at the base to almost white at the tip.
The Lautaret has a botanical garden and a road over it and a great many cars, and none of that is in the frame. Turning your back on the car park and kneeling in the grass is often the entire technique.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
