P#21: A Parting Shot of a Girl in Fields of Lavender

Plans Change

Bryan Peterson: This photograph was taken of my daughter in fields of lavender. This was down in Provence. It was one of those situations where I'm going out with a theme in mind. In this particular case it's a simple theme, a lifestyle theme, because I also do a tremendous amount of contract work for the likes of Corbis and Getty -- the two largest stock agencies in the world. (click the image for a larger version)

This particular day my goal was to get the cute little girl with the white dress playing the violin in a lavender field. By the time she got dressed and we put her out in one of the rows, she was doing okay but slowly her ears were tuning into what was an incredibly busy, busy bee in the process of pollinating those flowers.

She's never been stung before. Even to this day, she's never been stung, but she has the innate sense that sees the stingers. What happened is I was all set and ready to go, and she said, "I can't do this. I'm out of here."

I said, "No," yet I couldn't help but notice the beautiful backlight as she was walking out of there and I honestly managed to get two shots off again, back in the days of film. That was one of them. Of the two shots I took, that was clearly the best. The wind was kicked up the right way on her hair, the backlight was wonderful, and her expression isn't by any means one of sadness. It's more of a job well done and now she's coming in.

Not surprisingly, this picture of the fields of lavender has done pretty well in the stock photo business. Needless to say, it was really, really easy to get a model release.

In Summary

This may not be the shot that Bryan Peterson set out to take, but it was definitely one worth taking. This spontaneous picture of his daughter leaving the fields of lavender is simply amazing and is a prime example of how you sometimes need to work with what you have.