Capturing the Essence of Summer: A Photographic Adventure in Castle Farm’s Lavender Fields
During July 2023 made a couple of summer trips to the Lavender fields at Castle Farm nestled within the tranquil beauty of the Kent Downs. What follows is my experience photographing the Lavender fields culminating in a sunset shoot from the roadside.
Lavender Fields Return
Last August in 2022, I embarked on a scouting trip to the Castle Farm lavender fields, hoping to capture their beauty. Sadly, I arrived a little too late and missed the lavender in full bloom. However, I made a firm mental note to return in July 2023, ensuring I wouldn’t miss the opportunity again. The lavender season typically runs from the end of June to the end of July when it’s harvested.
On my first return visit, I discovered that Castle Farm offers two sides for visitors: one side is open for picnics but is more expensive, while the other side is open for walks. Unfortunately, the walking area didn’t open until 10:30 AM, and I had arrived at 9 AM, so I decided to explore the nearby Lullingstone Country Park until it opened.
After a bit of exploration, I finally made my way back to Castle Farm just as it opened. However, capturing the lavender fields proved to be more challenging than I anticipated. The best compositions seemed to be straight down the rows of lavender, but this presented depth of field issues, lighting challenges, and people walking into my frame. Moreover, various distractions like pylons and cables needed to be carefully excluded from the shots. It became evident that I needed another visit before the lavender season came to an end.
A225 Lavender Fields Viewpoint
A photography tip from the Kent Views Facebook group turned out to be a game-changer. They had taken a stunning shot from the roadside of the A225 at around 9 AM, where the lavender fields lay directly opposite. I used Google Street View to locate a convenient layby for parking, which offered the perfect viewpoint to capture the lavender fields with the setting sun. The advantage of using Google Earth, with its three-dimensional rendering and time information, helped me plan my evening shoot.
It was around 6pm when arrived and parked up in the layby on the A225. Was surprised to see people still walking about in the Lavender fields from my viewpoint. So took a walk down to enquire. Turns out the farm shops shut at 5pm but the walks are open until 8pm. The best day for an evening shoot would be Monday when the farm is closed. Oh well, should not effect my plans and visualisation for a sunset as that would not occur until after 9pm. The hills of the Kent downs were in the background though so sunset would be earlier. This is the advantage of using Google Earth over something like Photopills. Google earth renders it three dimensional along with the time. Also there were quite a few clouds in the sky these can either be a blessing or a curse for a sunset, there is no way of knowing unless you are there.
Preston Hill walk and scout.
Opposite Castle Farm is a footpath up to Preston Hill nature reserve so would have a good walk and scout there before returning to photograph the lavender fields during evening golden hour, sunset and hopefully into blue hour.
Preston hill not really show up on google maps and not show as public footpaths on OS Maps but its there as I suspected and had a good walk. Preston hill did provide some high viewpoints of the Lavender fields but wanted a much closer composition.
Lavender Fields Sunset
Was back down on the A225 before 8pm, finalising what composition would settle on. Liked the portrait shot but excluded the sky.
The portrait shot was more balanced, straight and excluded a lot of clutter as it is quite a busy scene. But was not really going to work for a sunset shot.
Come 8pm and everyone began to leave the Lavender fields. By 8:30pm the low clouds were thick in the sky and thought is was going to be another crap shoot. Lucky a small gap in the clouds provided an opportunity for the setting sun to shine through that lasted no more than 1 minute.
An aperture of F/16 ensured a sunburst effect with the setting sun. Setting up on a tripod beside a fairly busy road is a little precarious also the speeding cars passing can shake the tripod. Lucky by this time of the evening there was no wind to speak off so not need to worry about shutter speed. Being a good 20 meters away from the beginning of the Lavender fields not really present any DOF issues. Felt it was important to look straight down the lines of Lavender for a strong leading lines composition. A little busy in the mid ground with the farm buildings tents etc. The lavender not look quite as vibrant as it was during the earlier July visit. A recent shower would have saturated the colours more. Happy with the results though and now a visit to the nearby quaint little village of Shoreham for a pint.
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