Location : Saint Benoît du Sault is a medieval village in the Indre department of the Centre Val de Loire region of central France. The village was built on a granite rock outcrop around the Benedictine priory and overlooks a broad lake created by a dam on the river Portefeuille. The Benedictine Priory (hence Saint Benoît) dates from the 11th Century; beside it stands the Romanesque church, which is still used. It has been designated one of about 150 “Plus Beaux Villages de France”, an accolade that seeks to protect “the outstanding heritage of these exceptional villages”. Here we look across the lake to the Priory and it is the moon light that illuminates the exterior of the building. We are looking directly north so you can see the ‘Big Dipper’, also known as the plough reflected in the lake. The North Star is right at the top of the image almost directly above the Priory on the right third.

This image is hopefully going to be the base image for a star trail (here) and it was one of the last images before the lens was covered in condensation. A real shame as the aircraft had just about eased up and the street lights had gone out. It was not worth starting again as the full moon had just risen and it was getting quite bright. This image was shot using a tripod-mounted Canon 5DmkIII camera and a Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 II L lens. I used Live View focusing at 10x to focus on the Priory. The camera was set to manual exposure mode, f/5.6, ISO 640 and the shutter speed was 30 seconds. The RAW processing and the final adjustments were all done in Photoshop CS/6.