Lavender fields forever
Mayfield Lavender Farm - Banstead, UK
Self portrait.
www.savannahdaras.com
Sep, 2015Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this at Mayfield Lavender farm in England, last summer while I was living there with my sister for 3 months. On my birthday we ventured to the lavender fields with some other photographer friends, and spent the day frolicking and shooting. The scent of lavender everywhere was so beautiful and overpowering.Time
Taken about midday, I'd say probably around 3:00pm.Lighting
I've always been a huge fan of natural light, it's all I ever shoot with. The lighting in England is pretty much a photographer's dream, so much overcast or evenly diffused light, it makes for perfect shooting all the time.Equipment
Canon 5D Mark II, and Sigma 35mm f/1.4. My go to pair, I never use anything else.Inspiration
Being surrounded by beautiful landscapes and wonderful friends. Self portraiture is always my favorite form of photography, so as soon as I saw the lavender fields I knew I had to take this. Especially as I had green hair at the time, it went perfectly with the purples.Editing
Yes, I always edit my images. Post-processing is where my work truly comes alive. For this I did my usual procedure; I first bring it into Lightroom where I do base/simple color/exposure edits, then I import it into Photoshop where I do the rest of my work. I'll retouch the skin, dodge and burn, and usually add a lot of curves/adjustment layers. Adjustment layers make up about 80% of my editing process I'd say.In my camera bag
As I mentioned before, I always have my 5D Mark II and my Sigma 35mm. Those two are my go-to for equipment. I don't need anything else. Unless I'm doing solo self portraits, then I'll bring my tripod.Feedback
Sometimes when taking self portraits, certain angles can be a bit tricky to obtain if you're alone and only using a tripod. So for this one I had my sister help me, who is also a photographer herself. Typically I'll make the settings how I like on my camera, then just hand it to her to click. She acts as my "human tripod" a lot which really helpful for getting different angles and not having to constantly adjust my tripod. For this shot I laid back against the lavender (gently, without crushing them) and had my sister stand somewhat above me looking down, as I looked up. Pretty straight forward :).
