Chateaubrun at the heart of the valley to wolves the castle of giants.

Chateaubrun Castle is an impressive medieval fortress built on a promontory on the bank of the river Creuse in Cuzion, Indre, France. This Bronze Age castle is now being restored and is home to many monumental sculptures by Guy Baudat. Chateaubrun is not a showroom dedicated to the art market since his sculptures are not for sale. Many consider his unusual creations to be beyond the edges of good taste. Guy Baudat works outside the system in an artist’s semi-underground milieu beyond hype and against all odds.

The fortress is open to the public just one day a year during "Heritage Days" when the sculptor and potter presents his monumental works to the public. Guy has kindly given permission to those participating in my French photo workshops to visit and photograph his castle and his unique sculptures. This Sculpture ‘Female Flies’ is in bronze and stainless at a height of 8 meters in upper part of the courtyard overlooking the Creuse river. The scale is based on the sky. At its peak, a woman bird without wings.

This image was captured using a tripod-mounted Canon 5DmkII camera and a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens set to 70mm. This camera has been modified to capture IR (Infrared) light and also block visible light, so the colours captured are not normal. I used Live View focusing at 10x on the foreground. The camera was set to manual exposure mode, 1/15th of a second, f/11, ISO 100 and daylight white balance. The RAW processing and final adjustments were all done in Photoshop CC with the B&W conversion done using NIK Silver Effects Pro.