I have lived in Georgia for the past quarter century, but there has not been a day when I did not wish that I lived somewhere else. From my point of view, Georgia, like all of the US Southeast, is a poor place. When I say poor I don't mean monetary poverty. What I have in mind is Georgia's nonexistent landscape, its oppressive climate, its dull vegetation, its insignificant history, its distance from all the places that feel like home. So why have I stayed this long, you may wonder? Because life got in the way. Both my wife and myself are in academic careers, in the same Department of the same University, and that makes moving quite difficult. We never thought that we would be staying this long, though, and at least I am looking forward to leaving for good, when I retire in the near future - my wife is more adaptable and is in less of a hurry to leave.

When asked whether there is anything about Georgia that I like, my answer is always the same: Atlanta's airport, specifically the check-in counters (baggage claim not so much). Most of my photography starts at ATL-Hartsfield. On average, I manage to be gone for a total of some two months every year. The other ten months I am Georgia, and I try to make the best I can of it. For lack of a better place, I usually end up walking the trails at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia, and sometimes even talk myself into thinking that it is sort of OK. It is a good place to test and compare photo gear, for no better reason than the fact that I have photographed many times the same places, over the seasons and under a wide variety of lighting conditions. But those are technical matters, that you can read about in my other blog, if you are interested. 

One way, certainly not a new idea, to try to comprehend the place where I live is to follow some of the same places as they change along the year. I don't intend this to be a "surgical" review, however, showing exactly the same places at precisely spaced time intervals over the course of a year. What I will attempt to do is to use images that convey some understanding of what the Georgia Piedmont looks and feels. It may be that different times of the year are best captured in different places. I invite you to visit the autumn of Georgia at the State Botanical Garden and Sandy Creek Park, both located in Athens, short drives away from where I live.