Tag: house | Central Florida Photo Ops

This Thanksgiving we decided to meet in Asheville with MK, Art and Michele for a long weekend. Located in North Carolina close to the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, Asheville views can be spectacular!

Looking toward the Great Smoky Mountains

However there were several wildfires in the area, including this one that MK hit on the Tennessee / North Carolina border on her drive east along I-40 from Nashville.

Heading into town (photo by MK, used with permission)

This changed our plans. We’d hoped to do some scenic drives on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but due to the wildfires we opted for other activities. We were also at the end of the fall foliage color. We saw a (very) few trees with some nice color, but if we’d gone a few weeks earlier, there would have been many more.

Our highlight of the long weekend was visiting Biltmore Estate. Started in the late 1880s by George Vanderbilt (brother of Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of Vanderbilt University), this extravagant estate is elaborate by today’s standards – let alone the late 1800s!

The Biltmore House: an early morning view (before the crowds)

Complete with a pool, billiards room and bowling alley, it has all the modern features with the feel of Downton Abbey. Set aside time to walk room to room with the guided audio tour. If stairs are a challenge, there’s also a great film about the estate that you can watch in a room on the main floor.

Entrance hall decorations

Billiards Room

You can purchase tickets in advance (suggested at least a week ahead) and we chose the earliest ones available. Our 9:30 am entry time was the second tour of the day and it wasn’t crowded. But by the time we left in the early afternoon, the entire 8,000-acre estate was filled with visitors.

Also the Biltmore “house”: This giant gingerbread replica was on display in the kitchen

Parking is easy and there’s even a shuttle to get you to the estate. Save some time for after you visit the mansion. When you’re done, you’ll want to drive around and explore the beautiful grounds, gardens and winery – including driving straight through the main gates and past the iconic mansion.

>One of the Biltmore Christmas Lions that guard the entrance

The whole place was beautifully decorated for the Christmas season. We highly recommend visiting this time of year to see all the lights, ornaments, trees, foliage, manger scenes, Santas, and gingerbread houses.

Library: Christmas by the fireplace

More Christmas by another fireplace

Festive grand banquet room

The Biltmore Estate allows non-flash photography, but prohibits video. I suppose they don’t want anyone competing with the Hallmark Channel’s “A Biltmore Christmas” movie! MK got some good photos with her cell phone, but I opted for a dedicated camera with a wide angle lens for interior shots – I used a 20mm focal length. And the light inside can be dim, so a wide aperture, higher ISOs, and some in camera stabilization will help. I made many of my photos at f/1.8 with ISOs at or above 500.

Nativity Scene

We did the Asheville Trolley Tour on another day, although it wasn’t our favorite. The pacing was slow and we thought the commentary should’ve included more info about the beauty of the architecture and quaint Asheville neighborhoods. You can purchase “hop on / hop off” tickets but take into account the time between shuttles so you can explore and not wait too long for the next one.

Around Asheville

We also enjoyed many marvelous meals. Our favorite was at Jettie Rae’s Oyster House – amazing service, laid back but elegant atmosphere, and delicious food and drinks. MK said the oysters were the best she’s had in the Southeast United States.

We’ll leave you with this final photo of Father Christmas. He seems pleased watching over all of us enjoying this fine start to the holiday season.

Father Christmas

If you’re interested, you can see higher res versions of these (and a few more) North Carolina photos in this album on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/albums/72177720313134519/

Thanks MK for helping me write this post!

And thanks to everyone for stopping by and reading it. Stay positive, be kind, take care of yourselves and each other. Enjoy your time with family and friends. And if you can, make some memories (and some photos!).

Four of us from the Photography Interest Group visited the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge yesterday for the first time this year. It was a beautiful Florida morning and this place is rockin’!!

As usual, we looked for a sunrise photo first. We found this old house behind the Brevard Community College and the sky cooperated.

Old house and sunrise

It was really hard to decide on the highlight of this trip. Before I left yesterday morning, I Googled MINWR, and saw a report of “a Great Horned Owl on a nest on the left near 402 and SR 3”. Sure enough, we drove right up to it and it was there waiting there for us! The internet is really handy, isn’t it?

Great Horned Owl on nest

The second contender for highlight of the day was a Clapper Rail. I’d seen reports of these too, but I’d never seen one before and didn’t know what to look for. We parked at the first parking area on Black Point Wildlife Drive and were exploring when we met a tourist from Brazil. He pointed out the bird for us, but it was back in the shadows and with the glare from the sun it took me a while to see it even with him pointing right at it! Fortunately, it moved a bit and I was able to get a photo. We eventually saw three in this area and one more at the second parking area.

These Clapper Rails are hard to see…

There were more people / cars on BPWLD yesterday than I’ve ever seen before. A couple of times there were real traffic jams! There were also more birds than I’ve seen there in a long time – maybe ever. We saw Ospreys, Clapper Rails, Pintail Ducks, Coots, Moorhens, White Pelicans, Mottled Ducks, Green Wing Teals, Belted Kingfishers, Anhingas, Cormorants, Green Herons, Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Reddish Egrets, Little Blue Egrets, Cattle Egrets, Savannah Sparrows, Tree Sparrows, Tricolored Herons, Woodstorks, Roseate Spoonbills, a Great Horned Owl, Painted Buntings, various gulls, Red-winged Blackbirds, and others.

After BPWLD, we drove by the owl again and it was still there. Then we went by the visitor center to check on the Painted Buntings. There were at least two of them at the feeder. After that we had to return home – a couple of us had things to do in the normal world. 🙁

If you’ve meant to visit MINWR and haven’t made it yet – get out there now. I’ve never seen it better! You can click on the photos above to go to Flickr, where you can see a larger version as well as any comments and discussion about them. Click here to visit my Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge set, and click here to visit my Black Point Wildlife Drive set on Flickr.

By the way, I started an “Ed’s Life List” page to record the bird species I’ve seen in the wild. I’ll keep my list there and try to keep up to date as I go. Please visit if you get a chance.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

Central Florida Photo Ops

What and where they are and how to photograph them.

Tag Archives: house

A Biltmore Christmas