Fairytale

There are very few castles that fit the cliche of a fairytale castle better than Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley. It was built in the 16th century by king François l and Leanardo da Vinci was presumably one of its architects.

 

Castles are very difficult targets for nightscapes, as most of them are brightly illuminated at night. Chambord is no exception, but the illumination is more sophisticated than in other places. The lights are changing in color and brightness to simulate a circadian rythm.

 

I captured this image this week during a 5 day astrophotography trip to France with my buddy benjaminbarakat. We started to shoot during the blue hour and observed the illumination to understand its rythm. As expected, it was too bright to capture the stars and the castle in a single image, but every 7 minutes there was a sequence when the lights turned red and dimmed down within a few seconds, before they were momentarily switched off and brightened again with a blue tint.

 

This gave us roughly a 15s window to shoot single exposures and by varying the start and length of our exposures we were able to change the hue of the castle in the image. The pink light turned out to be my favorite. It is an effect of the long exposure combining the very last seconds of the red with the first few seconds of the blue illumination.

 

Prints available: ralf-rohner.pixels.com

 

EXIF

Canon EOS 6D astro modified

Samyang 24mm f/1.4

Single exposure of 10s @ ISO1600 f/2

Done