Chateau de Biron from a distance

Biron, France - another of several images of this walled castle city in the countryside of the Dordogne region of Southwest France. If you have time, please check out my wide angled image of the whole city: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo? photo_id=4358461

Thank you for your time, your comments, and your ratings!

Here is my final image from the Chateau de Biron. The photo was taken from the city of Monflanquin. It was a gorgeous place ... and I obviously had a gorgeous day. If you haven't looked at the wide image of the entire city, please check out that previous post. Also, please take a minute to look at some of the detail images in this same folder. As always, any thoughts or comments or ratings that you have for me are greatly appreciated! Thanks for your time!!

nice composition....congrats.

This gives an excellent idea of the scale of the castle. Nice shot.

A lovely shot of a lovely land... I like it a lot.

 

Thanks for your comments on my Brackvenn series, the grain is probably due to my non-professional postprocessing work... And yes, the wooden ways protect the nature by the crowds and the crowds by the nature...could happen that you vanish slowly into the soft ground... ;-)

 

Best Regards, Detlev

I like this distance shot - the chateau is almost an afterthought that is a nice surprise as you start with the brighter foreground and make your way up to the top of the picture.

You're so right about the "afterthought", Kim. In fact, I was standing near one of the high walls of Monflanquin, looking out at the lovely scenery surrounding the city. I didn't have binoculars, so I was using my 75-300mm lens to scour the horizon, as I knew that I wasn't too, too far from Biron (I had just come from there). I wasn't even sure that the tiny little city that I saw on the horizon truly WAS Biron, but extended the lens (300mm times the 1.6 magnification factor on the digital Rebel) and shot it. It was only back home, looking at the image on the computer, and comparing the walls of the bastide and chateau to the closer-up images from Biron that I decided that, yes, it is the same city. I have since found both on a map online and they are certainly close enough to get a shot like this. Such fun!! :-)

Lou Ann, that is a very good image of the castle and its surroundingThe bright yellow areas, starting from the Rhs. to the left one are bringing the viwer to the castle which is empowering the scene! beautiful colors and well done.

I like the smoothness nad clarity of this image. Would have preferred for the Chateau to have more of a presence and a little more shadow detail as my only nits. Just curious, but did you use Neat Image on this?

Ken, no I did not use Neat Image on this ... interesting, huh? I just used the ISO200 setting in my camera ... f/8 at 1/1000 with the lens set at 300mm. I have used Neat Image before and like it, for the most part. But I've been trying to avoid using higher ISO settings now that I have digital because of the grain.

My D70 does not look much good higher than 400 and I guess if it was blow up a bit its even worse!

 

I like the shot and what you are trying to do but the sky is not quite so blue and the castle roof not so red.

 

I think the compestion is nice but you are lacking some nice light, it seems to be on the yellow fields and not the castle.

 

Please keep shoting and commenting on my shots!

 

 

All the best,

 

 

What I find eye catching about this shot is the light & contrast in teh foreground landscape. The 2 brown fields are well placed in the composition, plus the varying light from above, highlights them. Then, as Kim mentions, the castle is almost an afterthought, nice surprise :) Did you use a polarizing filter?

No, I didn't use a polarizing filter ... it was such a gorgeous day (all of the recent 5 or 6 pics in this folder were taken that day ... you can see the sky in those shots). But it might have helped with the haze in this one. Interestingly enough, after reading through all of these wonderful comments and looking at the image again, I'm contemplating a radical crop. When I first took the image, it was all about the castle on the far hill. But I wonder how it would look if I cropped out the horizon all together ... took out a portion of the left side of the image (to keep to approximately 3:2) and made the image about the gorgeous French landscape. Hmmm...... I'll have to try that when I get home tonight!! :-)

I agree with Jayme, the light and shadow on the landscape are good. I like how the image seems to recede in layers and the castle makes a diagonal with the bottom right.

Great perspective with beautiful light. Using a polarizing filter, however, would give the image a crispier llok a more saturated and contrasted sky.

In any case I see that you are competing with me with these shots of castles...

No competition at all, Alberto - you ARE the master of castles! In fact, I thought of your images often while in France, and gained a new appreciation for the fact that your images are not all so easy to create. I'd have to live there to have the time to explore and experiment ... wait! What am I saying??? :-)

Move!

Plenty of young spaniards ready to learn mathematics in good English!

Alberto - that just might be on my list of possibilities when I tire of living in the DC area... It won't be too much longer.