ABG Garden of Lights

The Atlanta Botanical Gardens was awash with lights during the holidays this year.  The Garden of Lights began in November and ran through the first week of January and everyone I talked to that had visited the gardens loved the lights.  Lights are hard to shoot in the dark and it was especially difficult to photograph the spheres and tall forms that were on the Great Lawn and changed color to the music that was being played.  Before we left the gardens, the clouds opened up and we had to take cover in the Garden House.  After the rains stopped, there were some great reflections on the wet sidewalks.

Adventure in the Smokies

The last week in October, I headed to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with photo friends, Marshall and Clay. Our first stop was Cade's Cove, one of the first pioneer settlements in Tennessee, with log cabins built in the early 1800's. Three churches still stand in the cove and we visited the Methodist church and explored the area around it.
The next day it poured rain all day long which wasn't conducive to a photo shoot, but made the creek along Tremont Road full of water for the next day's shoot.
Later that day, we headed to Clingman's Dome, the highest point in the Smokies and in Tennessee. An early snow storm had hit the East and Clingman's Dome was covered in white! We arrived just before sunset and experienced a gorgeous winter wonderland.
Our last day we traveled to the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail just outside of Gatlinburg. While there are cabins to see here, the real view is the creek cascading alongside the road over and around huge moss-covered boulders. At some points along the trail, the creek is easily reached from the road, but at other points, it is a steep hike to the creek. This is such a beautiful creek, it is not to be missed by anyone visiting the Smokies.
The photo at the top of the page is Roaring Fork Creek.

Euharlee Covered Bridge

Clay and I took advantage of a beautiful Sunday afternoon in October to find Euharlee Covered Bridge in tiny Euharlee, Georgia near Cartersville. The bridge is very similar to the Red Oak Covered Bridge and was built by Washington King, the son of Horace King who built the Red Oak Bridge. Built in 1886, the bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The beautiful fall colors were reflected in the creek.

Rural Georgia on a July weekend

It was a hot day during the July 4th weekend when my friends, Clay and Mike, and I headed out for Meriweather County, Georgia, where we were looking for an old mill and a covered bridge. We found both-Jones Mill, an early 20th century grist mill and Red Oak Covered Bridge built in the 1840s by freed slave and bridge builder Horace King. One of the last surviving covered bridges in Georgia, it is the oldest and longest wooden covered bridge in Georgia. In the early morning light, the water under the bridge reflected the intense greens of the trees bordering Red Oak Creek.
After shooting these two unique spots, we traveled on to downtown Zebulon, Georgia, where we visited A Novel Experience-a wonderful bookstore in this interesting little town and county seat of Pike County. A Novel Experience is owned by Chris Curry, one of the organizers of Slow Exposures-an annual exhibit of photos of the rural South. When she found out we were on the quest for great photos, she told us about a decaying elementary school which just a block away. So, of course, we had to go and check it out. We could just imagine what school was like "back in the day". While Clay and I clicked away, Mike imagined what a great place this would be for a horror movie and by the time we left, he had the outline of a screenplay in his head!!
See more of Meriweather County and Zebulon Elementary on my website. http://www.myrtiecopephoto.com/galleries/current-projects/rural-south/ OR http://www.myrtiecopephoto.com/galleries/current-projects/urban-decay/index_2.html