Mt Olympus In The Clouds

Unusual atmospheric conditions this day...

i would love to live closer to Hearst Castle just so i could take advantage of its view and the pools. i'll never forget the indoor gold-leaf pool. spectacular.

 

the angle of this shot gives us very little atmospheric view, despite the heavy weather. i looks to me almost like a snapshot of the pool with an effect over it. the thing i want to see most out of this is for there to be more effect on the water, like a sheet of fog rolling onto a lake. It may have been better to shoot one of the pools from atop the man staircases, to place emphasis on the low visibility and the way the low clouds rob the scene of color. here it seems you've got a foot on either side of the line in terms of emphasis: pool or weather.

 

the two halves should meet i think.

 

 

regards,

 

jim

Thanks for your critique, you raise some interesting questions too. My view of the pool was almost non-existent from the stairs. Just looked like shapeless shadows in the fog. Mind you, this is mid-afternoon! I also included a shot of the indoor pool which can be found at: William Randolph Hearst's Indoor Pool. I think I included this shot of the Neptune Pool from Hearst's Castle, because the conditions one usually finds here are sun-dappled or sun-baked Greek Revival temples surrounded by the most unearthly blue pools you'll ever see. Now you see a view that doesn't illustrate the normal pretty picture view or postcard view, but even through the atmosphere you get the impression of a very special place in a very unique environment, representative of a time when excessive opulence flew in the face of the mere mortal man. The cost of constructing and building this pool alone would have exceeded the accumulated lifetime income for a thousand men. When men built tributes to themselves as the society around them struggled to survive. That's kind of like the Mount Olympus of mythology, but in ancient times men built huge cooperative tributes in granite and marble to those they called gods and publicly made their offerings to stay in favor of their mythical gods. Here a man considers himself so above and beyond the mere mortal that he builds a cost-is-no-object tribute in his own honor. In the end he passed away with most of the objects d' art from his years of buying were repossessed as his estate fell into bankruptcy!