All right. Just lavender fields. Although...
...many photographers would travel hundreds of kilometres to get to one. Portrait photographers, especially. Right now, I got me some portraits shot at the same time, same location as the images in this post...but I am not going to go there.
Also, I chose to break the guiding lines those fields are famous for. But if you simply take another angle...
And if you take yet another angle...
Well, I didn't. The stormy skies took precedence. What is all-important? Light.
If lavender fields are like gold mother loads, light is the excavation tool. Can't do anything without it.
Composition? I will go there soon. But why do I mention it?
Because cultivated fields provide nice guiding lines and those are important for composition. I will go there soon. I've promised a post on the topic. But he're the place for a memory of mine.
A lecturer on Composition, a person I admire for being the Polar explorer that he is, used to joke that those who shoot young girls or children in lavender need no rules to guide them. Lavender itself was attractive enough.
Sure it is...
Obviously, not only to photographers.
Settings:
Aperture F 4; Shutter Speed 1/400 sec.; ISO 200; Focal Distance 200 mm.
And it doesn't matter a bit. Because...
Lavender.
(All right, just kidding. It kind of does. Since gold should not go to waste.)
To be honest, it also calls for some refinement. Editing the images to bring out the best from the color. Some do it like hell. I try to remain close to reality. Which is cool enough.
But we're used to looking at high-contrast images, over saturated, digging deep into our senses.
When on the field, though, the tool that edits for us, most powerfully and at the most basic level of all, remains...light. It would give your image such properties that post editing can later discover. But you need them to be there.
"The picture is good or not from the moment it was caught in the camera."
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
So, lavender is resource. Like light. Like words.
But can we use it so say something more than "Look at this beautiful girl on this beautiful background!"?
Mostly, it remains something soothing, something pleasant, something beautiful as it is.
What do we do about it?
I don't know yet. I do consider growing lavender in the future.
Peace!
Manol