Golden Hour at Château Marouatte

 Golden Hour at Château Marouatte

After dinner, I looked at the time and realized the light outside was changing.

Golden hour.

For a photographer, that is enough of an invitation. I grabbed my camera and went for a walk around the grounds to see what the evening light might give me.

The château looked completely different from the way it had earlier in the day.

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From the drive, the entire complex spread out in front of me—the round towers, crenellated walls, pointed rooflines, and the tall central spire rising into a pale blue sky. The sunlight was low enough now to soften the stone and pick up the texture in the walls. Instead of simply photographing a château, I was beginning to photograph its shapes: circles, vertical towers, rooflines, openings, and shadows.

The evening sky was almost as interesting as the architecture.

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I dropped down low into the grass for this one. Suddenly the château disappeared and the landscape became the subject. A tiny yellow flower caught the last light while a single tall stalk reached dramatically upward into a sky filled with sweeping clouds. It was such a small scene compared with the massive château behind me, but that is one of the things I love about walking with a camera. You start noticing things you would normally step right past.

A little farther around the grounds, I found another view of one of the great round towers.

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What caught my eye here wasn’t only the tower. In the foreground was a pile of old wooden garden furniture or equipment, weathered and leaning together at odd angles. Behind it stood this enormous stone tower that has survived for centuries.

Old wood. Old stone. One temporary, one enduring.

The evening light touched the tower while the foreground remained darker, giving the scene wonderful depth.

Then I backed farther away.

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From the open field, the château stood almost alone against the sky. The two round towers framed the main building while the pointed spire rose from the center. I deliberately included a large amount of grass in the foreground and sky above it because I wanted the building to feel as though it belonged to the landscape rather than simply filling the frame.

This photograph also shows just how much open space surrounds us here.

You can walk only a few minutes from the main courtyard and suddenly feel as though you have the entire château to yourself.

I kept wandering.

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Not everything here is grand architecture.

Off to one side stood a simple stone outbuilding with a red tile roof. A large evergreen towered beside it, while barrels, pots, tools, and other signs of everyday work sat around the building.

I liked the contrast.

The château may make you think of knights and history, but this is also a working property. There are gardens to tend, buildings to maintain, trees to prune, and all the ordinary things required to keep an extraordinary place alive.

And overhead, the sky was putting on its own show.

Contrails crossed through streaks of high cloud while the last light warmed the trees.

Then I found the wide view.

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This may be one of my favorite perspectives from the walk because it shows the château in context.

The building occupies only part of the frame. The field spreads out across the foreground, the trees form a border around it, and the sky takes up almost half the photograph. One person walking across the grass gives the whole scene scale.

That tiny human figure makes the château seem enormous.

It also captures something about being here that photographs of the building alone cannot show: there is room to wander.

Room to look.

Room to stop.

Room to wait for the light.

I turned back toward the central courtyard.

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This panorama gives a completely different sense of the property. Instead of concentrating on the dramatic towers, it shows the surrounding buildings, pathways, trees, garden areas, and one of the round structures near the entrance.

The château is impressive, but the grounds are what make it begin to feel like a place rather than a monument.

There are little corners everywhere.

A path disappears behind a building.

A bench waits under a tree.

A doorway makes you wonder what is behind it.

And every few steps, the composition changes.

Finally, I ended up beneath one of the large trees in the courtyard.

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This photograph may say more about living here than any picture of the towers.

The enormous tree fills much of the frame, its trunk covered with texture and lichen. Beneath it are a wrought-iron table and chairs, and at the base of the tree sits a planter filled with pink flowers. Across the lawn, the long stone building is covered in climbing greenery.

It feels quiet.

Domestic.

Almost intimate.

After photographing towers and battlements, I liked ending with this small corner.

Because that is what this evening walk became.

I started out thinking, It’s golden hour. I should go photograph the château.

But once I began walking, the château became only part of the story.

There were tiny flowers in the grass.

Old wooden chairs.

Outbuildings.

Long shadows.

Gardens.

Trees.

Stone walls glowing in the evening light.

And an enormous blue French sky above all of it.

Golden hour didn’t simply make Château Marouatte prettier.

It made me slow down enough to really look at it.