Mount Arabia - Looking toward the Top
Pool View - Mount Arabia
Rock Pool - Mount Arabia
Weathered Wood, Pool - Mount Arabia

Mount Arabia is near Atlanta, Georgia, actually in Lithonia, Georgia. To its north lie, in order as you go north, Panola Mountain and Stone Mountain. Mount Arabia is the oldest of the three, and as its neighbors were formed, Arabia’s granite was transformed into the swirling patterned “Lithonia gneiss”. I first discovered Mount Arabia while we were living in Atlanta in the 1980’s. It fascinated me then and does now. These photographs were made a couple of summers ago. When I first visited the mountain, there was a small parking pullover by the road, and then you simply walked wherever you wished out over the mountain. The difficulty was, once across the horizon and out of sight of the road, it was easy to become disoriented, so I never ventured far afield. In addition to the rock shapes, the variety of lichens and familiar plants that adapt to survive on the rock is amazing. When planning the visit I had pictured stark black and white photos with a good deal of contrast, possibly dramatic clouds in the sky. So of course the day I had to work was overcast! Well, the more subtle contrast worked better for color, and revealed much detail that could have been lost, so I made a good many exposures, several of which I have yet to work with. I was able to explore much further onto the mountain than previously because there is now a series of rock cairns to guide you back to the somewhat expanded parking area, but there is a limit to how much time it is wise to spend on bare rock on a summer afternoon. I’ll hope for another trip, perhaps at another season. As you see, I found this rock pool an especially rewarding subject, but there are a number of different types of vistas to be discovered, and for anyone botanically minded, a goldmine of close-up possibilities as well.

Camera was the Olympus Evolt E-500 digital single lens reflex, 14-45 and 40-150 Olympus lenses. Also important to making the pictures was my seasoned Davis and Sanford tripod (it had been there before), as most of what I wanted to achieve involved stopping down for maximum depth of field. That tripod has a real history. I had had some results with which I was not pleased from using a camera on a tripod that was really too light for it. Looking at those pictures I resolved to hunt until I found a tripod that was “like a table”. I finally did, and it has supported everything from 4x5 and 8x10 view cameras through Pentax 6x7 (heavy!) and Hasselblad, to a tiny Leica IIIC and an almost-pocketable Canon digital camera.