Moody rapeseed
- 📍 Location: Cap Blanc-Nez, Escalles, Côte d’Opale, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
The rapeseed comes right up to the edge of the cliff here, so you get a band of hard yellow and then, immediately behind it, white chalk and grey sea. Those three do not naturally belong in one picture, and the fact that they do here is the reason I took it.
I framed with the field low and wide across the foreground, the cape rising on the right, and the horizon set just above the middle. The yellow is confined to the bottom third; any more of it and the picture becomes about the crop rather than about the collision.
The weather was grey and slightly hazy, which drains the sea and the sky to nearly the same pale tone. That flatness is what makes the yellow work: under blue sky and sunshine the colours would fight each other, and here the field is the only saturated thing in the frame.
This coast is often photographed in spring for exactly this coincidence of crop and cliff, and it is easy to make a loud picture of it. I wanted the quiet version: the yellow kept in its place, the weather left as it was, and the cape allowed to be as grey as it actually looked.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
