Amicalola Falls State Park is in the North Georgia area, located west of Dahlonega. Besides the obvious attraction, the waterfalls themselves, there is a network of trails through the park. These images are from the Spring Trail, the Mountain Laurel, or Green Mountain, Trail, and the Creek Trail, which together form a loop through the main part of the park.
Galleries
Photography
The Raven Cliff Falls Trail in South Carolina is a moderate 2.2-mile hike (4.4 miles, round trip) to an overlook for the waterfall that gives the trail its name. The trail is part of the Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area, with a trail head in Caesar's Head State Park. These images were taking in mid-January of 2013.
My first hike of 2013, I returned to a trail I've done before, over in the Keowee-Toxaway State Natural Area, just north of PIckens, SC. The Raven Rock Trail was the first hike I posted about on Quercus Ilicifolia. The entrance and exit for the Raven Rock Trail is on the Natural Bridge Trail. This is a relatively short hike to start the year, taking just under an hour to hike.
For my last hike of 2012, I took a relatively short hike just outside of Pickens, SC. The hike was the Glassy Mountain Hike, which is part of the Department of Natural Resources Heritage Trust program. Apparently, this trail had been closed for the fall of 2012, as it was cleaned up and new erosion controls were put down. It's a beautiful, if short and easy hike.
The Sulfur Springs Trail is about 4 miles of hiking through Paris Mountain State Park. It is one of the more difficult of the hikes in the area, but it provides a wide variety of scenery, from creeks to waterfalls to grand vistas across the surrounding foothills. These images were taken in mid-December, so they are not as green as this trail must be during the spring and summer, but it was still a beautiful trip.
I returned to a favorite hike of mine over in Caesar's Head State Park as autumn began to fade into winter. The Frank Coggins Trail is part of the Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area, north of Greenville, SC along the end of Hwy. 11, the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway. There are a number of trails in the area, and the Frank Coggins Trail is a nice, moderate hour-long trail. These pictures were taken as the light was fading, and I took the opportunity to play around with some filters in GIMP (www.gimp.org), my photography software of choice.
The Bear Hair Gap Trail is part of the network of trails in Vogel State Park, in the Blood Mountain region of North Georgia. It's a winding trail, with moderate elevation changes up through the surrounding hills. These pictures were taken during a hike in the late fall, where many of the leaves have already fallen, but there is still some color lingering through the valley. Although the hike itself is pretty and worth one's time, the spur trail off to the Vogel outlook is a must, as it provides one of the best views of the trail.
Websites
In 2009, I was asked to provide a new design for the Psychology Department at the University of Georgia. After a period of design work, the following gallery illustrates the design for the final product. Although this design is not exactly responsive, it was designed using an elastic technique, where the site expands or contracts to fit the font size. If a user enlarges just the font size for the site, the elements of the site adjust to fit the font size.
From 2009-2010, I worked with the Deparment of Chemistry at the University of Georgia to create a new public-facing site for their unit. The site at the time was about 10 years old, and they were looking for something new. I discussed options with them, including Content Management Systems for maintenance, and it came down to Drupal or Expression Engine. But after working with Expression Engine for a time, it became clear that Expression Engine would not provide the power and flexibiity that they would need for their site. As a result, I built the site in Drupal 6.
Dr. Brian Hopkinson from the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia requested a site for his research lab. Based on his research on phytoplankton, I created design elements around the unique and facscinating geometric shapes inherent in these small undersea lifeforms. The colors were chosen to reflect the idea of the marine environment, and as a background, I chose to have the site content "float" on waves and to represent depth, I had the color of the undersea area darken as it went down.