Aria waiting for the knight in shining armour (Patreon)

When I visited Italy a couple of months ago, Aria told me about a castle that might be abandoned in Piemonte, a couple of hours drive from my location.

We gave it a shot and drove down there while Aria tried to get more info and access points.

We found a door to the garden unlocked (with a chain and lock hanging loose) when we arrived. It seemed conspicuous, so we went to the "authorized access point, and ran into 3 Italian urban guys who had been waiting for some hours because a film crew was in the castle interviewing someone so they couldn't enter.

These things happens, so we went for lunch at the only restaurant in town. After lunch and an excellent coffee (that's one reason to love Italy), we drove back to the castle.

Not the garden door was locked, and we went (crawled) in. The first thing we saw was this grand staircase.

I went back the next day for a small personal workshop and to shoot a bit myself. The place was too good not to explore, as you will see in some upcoming series.

Oh, and in case you wonder why a castle is empty, the backstory is that it's a medieval castle that pas passed through some generations until at some point the inheritance has fallen upon hard times and was forced to sell.

Then some years ago, a wealthy Russian purchased the castle.

Some years later, the police discovered he used it for drug distribution/production, and they busted the place and impounded it.

Now it's owned by the state which don't have the money to refurbish, or even maintain it, so the castle is just lying there slowly decaying.

Shooting in these places I'd definitely recommend a tripod, and using the slowest shutter speed your model can sustain. I shot all these on 800 ISO, ƒ. 2.8-4 and around 1/30 second. On image 2+3 I had a a bit of light shooting into a wall behind me to light up the column a bit.

I didn't want to overpower the main light, but I needed a bit of fill light.