I’m still trying to recover from the 4 action packed days, sun up to sun down, covering this event. Here are a few track side photos from the Grand Prix on Sunday.
Miami Beach Lifeguard Shacks
A combination of drone and land-based photos from our last Miami trip. I tried to photograph the lifeguard shacks at different times of the day.
Miami's Big Ball
Sunrise from Miami Beach earlier this year. I loved all the different Art Deco designed lifeguard shacks up and down the beach.
Marco Beach
Yesterday I posted a sunset time lapse video from my hotel balcony. Today I have a sunset photo from the same spot on Marco Island Florida.
Marco Island Sunset Time Lapse
Here is a quick time lapse I captured this week in Marco Island. The sunset wasn’t great on this night, but I loved the clouds…. I captured this from the hotel balcony. It was a shame we had to come back.
Colony Hotel
Not much I can say about this photo that you can’t see for yourself. This is, of course, a great example of South Beach Art Deco architecture during the pandemic.
Faena Mammoth
I found this beauty, pre-trip while doing research of cool photography spots around Miami Beach. I almost always research photo spots before traveling. Anyway, I found this guy and put him on my “Photo Wish List”. I did something at this spot that I don’t think I’ve ever done. I went back to this spot three different times in 30 hours, trying to photograph it in the best light. This first time I went, it was late in the afternoon and all I got was reflections off the glass from the sun, which I should have thought about in advance. The second time was right before sunrise the next morning, when I captured this photo. I couldn’t stay as long as I wanted (I was hoping to capture it closer to sunrise), but security ran me off. So, I thought I missed an opportunity and probably didn’t get any good photos. Therefore, I went back again later that day right before sunset, hoping to capture a good shot. I used polarizing filters, wide angle lens, zoom lens, and many other technics to minimize the glare off the glass. Turns out the best time was this shot before sunrise. At least that was the best shot I captured, I’m sure a better photographer would have captured this better all three times.
Note: Artist Damien Hirst created this with a real mammoth skeleton, gold PVD covered stainless steel, powder-coated steel, rubber and gold leaf. You don’t see many Mammoth Skeletons in many hotels….but they have one at the Faena Hotel Miami Beach.
41st Street Lifeguard Shack
Miami has very cool lifeguard stations along Miami Beach. I don’t know how many variations they have, but they are all a wonderful Art Deco style. This is the one at 41st Street during sunrise.
If someone watched me while I photographed this spot, I”m sure they wondered what was wrong with me. I didn’t have time during the sunrise to photograph multiple lifeguard shacks, they are too far apart. So, I probably took 500 photos of this one from different perspective, different light (before, during and after the sunrise), different cameras, etc.. I’m sure they thought I lost my mind….. Maybe I did, but I think the final product was worth it. Oh…and the homeless people sleeping under the lifeguard shack probably wondered about me as well.
Suwannee River
Hello Monday!! I took this photo last August while I was in Florida at a family member’s house. That area of the state is very rural with lots of wilderness and nothingness. This county has less than 9,000 total people according to the 2010 Census. In fact (according to Wikipedia), this county is the 2nd least populous in the state of Florida. Anyway, there is something very pretty about the Suwannee River from the ground and certainly from the air. By the way, in case you’re wondering, this river is approximately 246 miles long.
To view a larger version, click HERE
Don’t forget to check out my photo galleries. I update and add to them often.
Elephant Octopus
The Wynwood Walls area of Miami is so cool. As you know from my past picture of this area, the city converted this abandoned area into an artist display exhibit. There are now a ton of amazing murals created by the best graffiti artists in the world. They rotate topnotch artists so that it is always changing. If you visit it again down the road, the murals (graffiti) will be changed.
To view a larger version, click HERE
Wynwood Walls
Sangrias
During our last trip through Fort Lauderdale Florida, MJ and I had lunch at this beach side restaurant and bar. To my surprise, they had an huge neon Yuengling inside the place. So getting a Yuengling was tempting, but I went with this extra large drink instead.
To view a larger version, click here: https://500px.com/photo/196615493/sangrias-by-brook-ward?ctx_page=1&from=user&user_id=3695440
Wynwood Fans
Today’s post is another photo from the Wynwood Walls area of Miami. I love this area of the city. The artwork is amazing and the creative use of old abandoned facilities is cool. This space is an art exhibit using old fans and color.
To view a larger version, click here: https://500px.com/photo/195430011/wynwood-fans-by-brook-ward?ctx_page=1&from=user&user_id=3695440
Art Exhibit in the Wynwood Walls area of Miami
Wynwood Walls
Earlier this year, I spent a few days in Miami and I got the opportunity to photograph the very cool Wynwood Walls. This area of the city is covered with wonderful graffiti by gifted artists. These artists are sponsored and paid to create their art in this area. Today’s post is from that night. I got so many great photos that night.
Wynwood Walls in Miami Florida
Miami Port Sunrise
This might not be a popular photo with most of you, but I like it a ton. Maybe because I was there watching the sun come up in Miami from the back of a cruise boat. There is always something special about experiencing an event vs. seeing it in a photo. That may be a funny thing to read from a photographer, but its how I feel about the subject. Don’t get me wrong, I always try to capture the moment, but admittedly I fail more times then I succeed. It’s very hard to capture the feeling, emotion, and senses you experience in a photo. This photo is a great example. The photo can’t capture the warm breeze as it blew past our cabin balcony. The photo can’t capture how I felt as the sun came up. The buildings went from being in the shadows of the night, to reflecting a beautiful orange glow of the morning.
Anyway, there are usually a ton of reasons why I like some photos that might not seem wonderful at first glance. But they all have meaning for me and that is often why I share them with you.
To purchase a print or view the entire gallery, click the photo above.
Wynwood Walls
If you ever get a chance to visit the Wynwood Walls area of Miami, don’t miss it. The outside public gallery of graffiti art is amazing. Wall after wall of great artist have contributed their talents to make this a wonderful outdoor exhibit. Good stuff.
Here is a link to the official website for Wynwood Walls: http://thewynwoodwalls.com/
To purchase a print or view the entire gallery, click the photo above.
Cruise Casino
It’s been a very long week. So I am keeping my post short tonight. This is a 7-exposre auto-bracketed HDR photo of the casino on the Carnival Dream. If you’ve been on this ship, you know this is a large floating city including the casino. Have a great weekend.
To purchase a print or view the entire gallery, click the photo above.
Spanish Monastery in Miami
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.
How I captured this picture:
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.
South Beach Miami - Great Christmas Gift
Christmas Gift
MJ and I didn’t have any family events or dinners at Christmas this year. So we took a long weekend including Christmas and went to Miami as a small Christmas gift to each other. It was nice to get away from the cold weather for a few days.
While we were down there, we visited a bunch of places such as South Beach, Bayside, Bal Harbor, Downtown Miami, North Miami and a 1,000 year old Monastery Cloister. I got a ton of great pictures at just about every stop.
Park Central Hotel – Art Deco District
Tonight I thought I would share a picture I took about 30 minutes after sunset of Park Central Hotel on Ocean Drive in South Beach. This strip of road has all kinds of old cool Art Deco buildings with hotels, bars, shops, etc… They are interesting looking during the daylight, but at night they turn into super cool neon buildings.
This area is hopping with traffic (both cars and people) so it is almost impossible to take a picture without the traffic getting in the way. I thought about aiming the camera up to avoid the traffic, but I wanted to include the 1920’s antique car that sits in front of this hotel (see bottom left). So I made the best of the situation. I positioned my camera across the street with a tripod on the sidewalk trying to get as much height as I could. I did this hoping to shoot the picture over as much traffic as possible. As you can see, I was shooting over a parked car. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I captured the hotel sign reflection in the roof of the parked car, which added a cool element in the photo.
Because it was dark, I used a 5 Bracket exposure set (+2, +1, 0, -1, -2) will all of them being fairly long exposures. This helped get the correct lighting (exposure) and it helped make the moving traffic (people and cars) disappear from the photo. All you can see from the traffic are the headlights and tail lights from the cars. You’d never know it from the picture, but the sidewalk in front of the hotel was packed with people walking. With the long exposures, they disappear making it look like the sidewalk was empty. You can also see the clouds moving in the photo because of the long exposures. Anyway, I think there are a bunch of cool effects in this photo and it gives you a nice look at a “HOT” area of Miami.
I hope you enjoy this pic.
Park Central Hotel in South Beach