Well, I’ve been thinking about how to mix things up a little on the blog. I am concerned that I’ve been posting to many photos from my most recent trips. So tonight, I am posting a picture from a photo walk I did a few years ago. I’ve never shared any pictures from this spot. I hope you enjoy tonight’s mix up.
To purchase a print or view the entire gallery, click the photo above.
I took this picture a year ago at the 869-year old Cloister of the Ancient Spanish Monastery and St. Bernard de Clairvaux Episcopal Church in Miami. It was built in Spain from 1133 to 1144 and later relocated to Miami. This is one of the inter-chambers. There are a bunch of cool rooms and locations at this site. To learn more about this location, click here to see one of my previous posts where I go into much more detail about the Cloister (http://brook-ward.com/blog/2013/1/11/spanish-monastery-in-miami)
To purchase a print or view the entire gallery, click the photo above.
I’ve posted a couple of pictures already from my Miami
trip. One of the pictures was of
the beach and the other was the art deco Park Central Hotel on Ocean Drive. Both are exactly the type of pictures you’d expect from Miami. Tonight I
have something very different that no one would expect to find in Miami.
On our first full day in Miami, MJ and I went on a self-guided tour of a 868-year old Cloisters of the Ancient Spanish Monastery and St. Bernard de Clairvaux Episcopal Church. We are probably the only tourist in the last 12 months to leave the beach and find an ancient Spanish Monastery. The Monastery of St. Bernard de Clairvaux was built in Spain during the years of 1133 to 1144. Cistercian monks occupied the monastery for almost 700 years.
In 1925 William Hearst purchased the Cloisters and the Monastery’s out buildings. The buildings were dismantled stone by stone and placed in 11,000 wooden crates. Then they were shipped to the United States. Due to Mr. Hearst's financial problems, the stones remained in a Brooklyn New York warehouse for 26 years. After Mr. Hearst's death, the stones were purchased and the Monastery Cloister was rebuilt in Miami. The re-construction took 19 months and about $1.5 million dollars to put the Monastery back together. Today the Monastery is owned and operated by the parish of St. Bernard de Clairvaux.
The parish holds church services and host events (weddings, receptions, etc..) at the Monastery on a routine basis. This was one of the most interesting places we’ve visited in the last year for a bunch of reasons.
This was a 7-bracket set (+4, +2, +1, 0, -1, +2, +4) taken in Aperture mode set at f13. I had the camera on a tripod and backed up into the corner as far as possible to get as much of both hallways into the shot as I could. I used my Nikon D800 with the 14-24mm lens. This is a great wide-angle lens, which works excellent in this type of setting. I created the HDR image in Photomatix Pro and did some minor editing in Photoshop CS6.
I hope you enjoy this image as much as I do. The picture is interesting, the Monastery has lots of history and the structure was unique for Miami (or the United States).
To purchase this print, please click the picture above.
