Lordington Lavender

During a twenty minute lull in the summer's rain we piled into the car, grabbed a few props and joined friends already at Lordington Lavender...

http://www.lordingtonlavender.co.uk/

Due to the fairly miserable weather we've had this summer the lavender wasn't as thoroughly in bloom as it has been in previous years but we were very keen to take a few nice pictures of the wee one.

We had a vintage suitcase, a home-made quilt and a few balloons from a party as props; so it would be a little bit staged but a great opportunity to try out some family portrait ideas.

We had time to take a few for our friends as well, the balloon worked very well as a fun prop to play around with and both of the boys really enjoyed themselves.

It was lots of fun and although they both insisted on eating a fair bit of lavender I took a good few photos that I'm happy with.

 After a short while it really turned into an 'eat the lavender' competition and although no one is looking at me I like the two pictures above.  It's relaxed and almost looks like a sunny day!

 I contemplated a speedy lens-swap as the girls went for a walk but shot this with the sigma 24-70 and cropped in a bit.  The Sony Alpha 77 has such a loopy resolution (24mp) it allows me to crop in a fair bit before loosing resolution.

 It was all very relaxed and we managed to get a fair few pictures shot before the clouds began to threaten again.

 The suitcase worked very well, he could almost be about to catch the train and head of on his holidays here :)

 When they weren't industriously munching on lavender flowers (he's also pretty fond of clover) they both pulled out the smiles and generally made it all lovely and easy. 

 There was a little hedgerow of wild flowers next to the field so for variety we took a few of our props (and a child) of for a few pictures.

It was a brilliant afternoon and well worth re-visiting next year.  There are already a few families booking similar shoots so drop me a line and we'll book in a day!  www.edwardbryan.co.uk

After getting a bike fixed I decided to take the camera on a short pedal along Salterns Way..

http://www.conservancy.co.uk/page/cycling/346/

... which is a pleasant and flatish route from Chichester to the Witterings.  It's a decent length at about 18km and ends up on West Wittering beach so perfect for a summer pedal and picnic. (It's where I proposed a few years back :).  It's in no way a demanding ride (I took a road bike on it once) but very pleasant.

Blogger seems to have changed how images are displayed, so if you're keen to see the pictures larger than they are here just click on one and you'll get a nice slide-show to click through.

I didn't get as far as West Wittering on this pedal, it was beginning to get a bit dark by the time I got to Itchenor so that was as far as I went.  

The crows obviously knew what to do when someone pointed a black tubular thing in their direction, I wanted a shot closer to them but they all flew away almost the second I stopped.

 The house boats by the sailing club are always lovely, and I realised that the last time I was here it was hours prior to Milo being born and we were on a medically-advised stroll to ease the contractions.  This trip was a little less tense and I was glad I didn't bump into the petrified biker who offered to help last time.

 It was pretty windy so there were a few people out sailing the clouds scudded past quickly which led to rapidly changing light and what I thought were good conditions to use the Sony A77 with the Tamron 70-300.  I took a Sigma 10-20 with me as well but found that I didn't really use it on this trip.

 I quite like the yellow tint that the camera has given these pictures, I was shooting straight into the sun and I think it upset the auto-white balance.  This is never a problem anyway as I shoot in RAW but when I fixed them to have a more 'natural' colour I found that I preferred the originals.

 I hoped for a dramatic sunset but unfortunately this is as good as it got, clouds obscured the sun shortly after this shot and it clearly wasn't going to happen.  On the upside, I made it back from Itchenor in half an hour. That's nine miles on a mountain bike at an average speed of 18 mph, not shabby!

www.edwardbryan.co.uk