Hearst San Simeon State Historic Monument

• William Randolph Hearst.

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The Hearst Castle in glorious California sun. Took this shot couple of weeks ago while visiting the castle at San Simone. I was a bit underwhelmed by the whole place but again compared to all the natural beauty of California.

• David Viscott.

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This is the Roman pool from Hearst castle which is located near San Simeon California. Located just after the Big Sur coastline, Hearst Castle is a must visit if you love architecture and old fashioned grandeur. The place is nothing short of stunning but pretty difficult to shoot with the light coming through the windows illuminating certain parts of the pretty dark room. I had to jack up my ISO to 500 to get a pretty decent shutter speed. This one is a 5 shot HDR as they dont allow tripods, hope you all like it..

• Tadao Ando.

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When we moved to Los Angeles, I was super excited about exploring the amazing number on national and state parks that California has to offer. My wife on the other hand had slightly different plan, she was more interested in exploring the cute little towns, food hubs, and other quirky attractions. To her eternal irritation I often got my way on our initial trips due to my constant planning and her busy schedule. After about a year of national parks and solitude, she put her foot down and got her way. So, as part of her plan we visited the Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

Now this is a very popular attraction for folks visiting California and a lot of the residents of San Francisco and Los Angeles. This makes the Hearst Castle a very busy location and pretty expensive to get a ticket. We visited on a beautiful day and spend our initial time on a tour and then basically wandered around the premises enjoying the fantastic views from high perch of the castle grounds. To be honest we both found the whole thing very boring until we stumbled into the roman pool section of the building. The amazing blue tiles and their stunning reflections in the pool provided me with some stunning photo opportunities. Another shot I took here and posted way before is one of my most popular shots on Flickr and I didn’t think enough of this shot to post it then. But my processing skills have increased since then and I think I have done a decent job on it to be eligible for posting.