Photographers in Valensole & the lavender fields

Professional photoshoots on the Valensole plateau start from €279. Packages vary by duration and the number of edited photos — from a sunrise hour in the lavender rows to a longer morning that adds Moustiers-Sainte-Marie and the turquoise water of the Verdon.

The rows colour up in the last days of June, peak through roughly the first ten days of July, and harvesting follows soon after — by the third week of July many fields are already cut. That is a window of about three weeks, and it moves a little every year with the spring weather. Book the window rather than the month, and ask your photographer what is standing that week: local photographers check the fields, not the calendar, and will route you to the blocks still in flower.

No — the plateau is working farmland, and every field belongs to a grower whose crop pays for the year. Stay on the tracks and the field edges, where the best frames are anyway: a stone hut in the middle of the rows, an almond tree on a rise, a path running to the horizon between two blocks of purple. Bees work the plants from mid-morning, which is one more reason the session belongs at sunrise, when the plateau is empty and cool.

Plenty, as long as nobody is promised purple in October. Twenty minutes away Moustiers-Sainte-Marie is wedged into a cleft in the cliffs with a gilded star hanging on a chain between the rock faces, and beyond it the Gorges du Verdon open with turquoise water at the Pont de Galetas and long balcony roads above. The plateau itself turns gold with wheat in August and white with almond blossom in February, and the wide, empty horizon works in any month.