Happy Friday from the Queen City!
I was testing out some new drone mapping systems over Cherry this week and managed to take a few photos of the city. This buildings in the foreground are all part of the Metropolitan in Midtown. I was both surprised and not at all surprised by the volume of historic Cherry homes being torn down and replaced with row upon row of townhomes.
This photograph was captured with a DJI Mavic Pro drone.
When you reach higher altitudes on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the trees are always at battle with the wind. The gnarled, wind-swept trees and low brush often make for natural frames of the mountains behind them. If you can catch it at sunset, you're in for a special treat.
This photograph was captured with a Sony a6300.
Designed by Architect Ezra White and built in 1769, the Miles Brewton House is considered one of the most complete Georgian townhouses in the United States. It's considered a "double house" in Charleston because it is twice the width of the average historic Charleston home. The narrow row-home style of Charleston's early homes allowed residents to take advantage of breezes from the harbor when they opened up windows on both sides of the narrow homes. So while more elegant, this home was probably much warmer in the sweltering Charleston summers in an era before air-conditioning.
This home was occupied on two different occasions by armies who used it for their headquarters. It was occupied by the British during the Revolution and the Federal Garrison after the end of the Civil War. The Brits even left some graffiti etched into the mantle that remains to this day.
My favorite part of the house is the wrought iron fence, topped with chevaux de frise — or iron spikes. These spikes became popular in Charleston following a slave insurrection plot in 1822. However, most were melted down for artillery during the Civil War. One of the only remaining examples can be seen at the Miles Brewton House.
This photograph was captured with a Sony a6300.
These guys were the house band at Charlotte's Oktoberfest celebration at the Waldhorn restaurant last year. As always, the music, food and beer was great!
I pulled this one out of my archives because I was setting up a new TV antenna this weekend (buh-bye Time Warner!) and came across one of the secondary digital channels for a local PBS station that was playing the Lawrence Welk Show! That show instantly brought me back to the early 1980s, watching the Lawrence Welk Show with my grandparents at their house. It's neat when unexpected sights, sounds or smells bring back such vivid and happy memories :-)
This photograph was captured with a Sony a6300.
I love the signage associated with early 20th-century European metros. One of the coolest things about them is the lack of consistency from stop-to-stop. Often, each stop has a design associated with the location and the era that neighborhood first became hot. Many new train lines all around the world try to embrace this concept but the ones that developed organically — like Paris and Barcelona — are unique in that the signage is authentic because it was actually created at the time the neighborhood earned it... rather than being awarded the honor half a century later.
This photograph was captured with a Nikon D90.
There's a bridge that separates the SC Riverbanks Zoo from the Botanical Gardens. It feels like you are going on an adventure over the river and into the forest as you traverse the two connected parks.
As we walked over the bridge, we watched a cormorant diving for fish. He would swim underwater for 30 seconds to a minute with each dive. It seemed like he was part bird, part river otter.
This photograph was captured with a Sony a6300.
5506 Skybar is the highest bar east of the Rockies, perched atop Beech Mountain Resort. The bar is open in the winter for ski season and the summer for mountain biking season.
Today is closing day for the 2017 winter season on Beech Mountain but in two months, everything will be open for the summer festivities!
Come on up to Beech Mountain this summer for mountain disc golf, mountain biking and mile high yoga on the deck of 5506 Skybar!
And of course, don't forget to book your stay at Slopeside, our mountain chalet on Beech Mountain!
The Disney World parks are full of photo opportunities and are a great place to get started if you're interested in photography. There's something photo-worthy just about wherever you look.
Here are my top five. Click any photo to learn more about it.
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F1 is back!
This weekend, F1 kicks off the 2017 season in Melbourne, Australia. I hope Valterri Bottas does well at Mercedes — he has big shoes to fill. I know I'm going to enjoy seeing him on the podium a lot more than his predecessor!
That said, I'm still going to be cheering for Ferrari with Seb and Kimi first and Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen second.
I think this is going to be the season that Ferrari and Red Bull finally catch up to the previously unstoppable Silver Arrows. I hope that new Ferrari air intake system works as well as it looks!
This photograph was captured with a Sony a6300.
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