Lavender photoshoot at Castle farm, Kent with the Samyang 35-150mm L mount.

Last Friday (27/06/25), I had the pleasure of photographing a lovely lady named RJ at the stunning Castle Farm Lavender fields in Kent.

We intentionally booked the latest available time slot at 5:30 PM to catch the light as it softened into the evening. While it wasn’t quite golden hour—sunset’s currently around 9:15 PM—it was well past the harsh midday sun. We made the most of the light and stayed until nearly 8 PM, enjoying that calm, diffused glow that starts to roll in during the early evening.

This session was a great opportunity for me to also capture some videography for my youtube channel so that I could create a behind the scenes feature. I used the much-praised Samyang 35-150mm F2-2.8 lens mounted on my Panasonic S5ii, which gave me a fantastic range and beautiful sharpness throughout. I also took a few portraits using a Godox AD600 off-camera flash—though I’ll admit that was a bit of a challenge! There was just enough wind to keep me on edge about it toppling over. That said, the breeze worked in our favour too, giving RJ’s dress some natural movement that added a dynamic, organic feel to the shots.

I also brought along my new Insta360 to grab some behind-the-scenes B-roll. It’s been a recent addition to my kit, and this was a perfect shoot to try it out. I’ve compiled some of that footage into the youtube video also if you'd like to take a look.