The Old Castle of Saive Go Round

Lovely place, lovely ruins of the old castle of Saive in Belgium and lovely memories. This is where we used to live. Oh well, not exactly in the castle which is kinda falling apart but in the renovated old inn that you can barely see in the lower left part of the planet (yes, I live on a planet, don't you? hehe). The land Lords (and neighbours) are also lovely people, lots of lovely things and atmosphere I guess, heh.

The castle is from the 13th century. The last Lord who lived there, Jean-Denis de Monsen, sold the seigneury to the Méan's family in 1692. The Mean's will have another castle built (in Cahorday, another part of the village of Saive) and will abandon this one. Everything remaining now are ruins but the domain belongs now to the Herrmann's (if they happen to read this... greetings!). They are the administrators and founders of a non-profit association "Les Compagnons du Vieux Château" created to prevent the castle from totally collapsing and promote the site. The ruins are nowadays (and since 1971) classified as historical monument.

Sources: "Les Compagnons du Vieux Château" asbl (association sans but lucratif).

The panorama planet is made out of a 360° panorama. Enjoy!
For each individual shot: ISO 100 - 18mm - f/5.6 - 1/30s

"Au clair de la lune".

Under the moon light, in the middle of a late belgian night (in the village of Saive). A five seconds exposure time photo. I had a hard time trying to find the correct settings on the camera and missed a few shots, I was hoping the moon to be more on the left of the frame but was satisfied with the results anyway.

Above image: ISO 200 - 154mm - f/6.3 - 5.0s

Weird reflection.

Here on the left is a similar shot to the first one (taken 3 minutes before) except that I missed the focus and the moon has been duplicated in a weird way as it has been duplicated with a different exposure and mirrored. Probably a flare effect...

Left image: ISO 200 - 200mm - f/6.3 - 3.0s

Panorama - "La Julienne", overflowing river

Saive, Belgium. Enjoy the panorama.

It's been heavily raining the whole day. After five amazingly warm sunny and summer days, we could only expect this, water, a lot of water... The far right house had its basement overflowed.

I've been living here in this place for about three years but for the first time I see the water stream like this. Usually, this is a quite small river. A dramatic yet beautiful country scene!

Enjoying the evening in Saive (Belgium).

The beautiful view from my terrace at the Old Castle of Saive (Belgium). It's been a dark rainy cloudy day; nothing that reminds you of the summer but rather of the beginning of autumn. At the end of the evening though, the sky is clear, the sun goes down and colours in the sky are magnificent. It's almost 9.00pm, here comes the Blue hour when the skies reveal this deep blue and you can appreciate this magenta colour gradation. The stress of the day makes room for the peace of mind, it's just so beautiful :-)

This panorama is made up of 6 consecutive photos taken in long exposure time (2 to 3 seconds), my camera was on tripod standing on my terrace. Yeah, I know, not bad for a view...

'La Julienne', river of Saive

It had to wait for February (2012) for getting surprised by crisp winter days. we didn't really expect it. Whatever Mother Nature decided, that was an opportunity to get a stunning view on part of the village from the south side of the terrace of the Old Castle of Saive (Belgium). In this valley flows the little river 'la Julienne' of which you can see some pretty furrows in the foreground.