July 2021 - In the lavender fields

At this stage of last year’s lockdown, most of us were allowed to go to places where there were – shock, horror – other people. I was shielding, so the guidelines said I should stay in until the end of the month. But I was not going to miss the lavender displays at Mayfield Lavender Farm – and I went out a few days before I was to be formally released (!) and spent a very happy few hours with my camera at the field.

Lavender is a lovely plant to be around: it looks good, it smells good, and it is great place for bees. The lavender is grown in long lines with pathways between them – allowing for people like me to get up close and personal to it, but mainly, I guess, to allow for harvesting the flower. During the flowering period the field is usually pretty full of people like me looking and enjoying the place. That Saturday it was very full – a sunny day and there were loads of parents and children as well as a lot of couples trying to get a perfect selfie in the lavender field. 

I took a lot of pictures of the sightseers but can’t show most of them because their faces are visible, and I don’t have permission from them to publish their images. (I think that in law a photographer can take pictures of people in public places and can then publish them, and I am maybe over-cautious on this – see https://www.blpawards.org/competition/photo-rights). In this photo I have blurred the face of the little girl at the top of the picture so that she can’t be recognised.

But the photo itself is really sweet: two very young children running through a lavender field and then deciding to cut through to find Mummy. The composition works well – the path is a diagonal from the right bottom corner, which pulls your eye into following the children; and the surrounding lavender is in full bloom and looks beautiful.