I took this picture during my photo tour of the lavender fields in the Provence region of France last summer. I actually hesitated to offer this tour for a few years because I had been told there are so many people in the fields that good photography is very hard. Fortunately, my group didn't have any problem at all. Driving around the area, you can find spectacular fields devoid of the selfie-stick crowd with no problem at all. Every day we had amazing photography. The key in taking great images of this area has three components: 1) Complete depth of field is a must, 2) the lighting should be either overcast or sunrise/sunset, and 3) the background should be complementary. In this shot, an intense storm passed over us, and prior to the rain, we had beautiful dark clouds. Notice how close the foreground was to the lens -- about 2 to 3 feet away. That dramatized the foreground elements by making them disproportionately large compared to the distant elements. I used a 16-35mm wide angle lens, and the settings were 0.3 seconds, f/22, and 200 ISO. Also, notice the bluish color cast that came from using daylight white balance under a stormy sky. In this instance, I prefer the deep, blue tones.
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