Pic(k) of the Week: Sweetgum sunset

Click on the image for a larger, hi-res version (on Flickr).

Winter-dried fruits of an American sweetgum tree 'litter' a paved trail at sunset.

Stone Mountain Trail at the Avondale Railyard
DeKalb County (Scottdale), Georgia, USA.
21 January 2026 (6:17 pm EST).

***************

American Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) is one of the most common hardwoods in the southeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States. Stepping on the tree's fallen dried seed pods can feel like stepping on a toy Lego piece, barefoot or shod. This hiker was adroitly avoiding that fate.

The Stone Mountain Trail is one in the PATH Foundation's system of pedestrian trails in and around Atlanta, Georgia. It comprises nineteen miles of purpose-built paved trails and municipal-built sidewalks that connect downtown Atlanta (at Centennial Olympic Park) east to Stone Mountain Park.

***************

Francis Poulenc: Sonate pour flûte et piano (Flute Sonata)
Album: Bennett & Benson – Poulenc: Flute Sonata
(Label: Camerata, 1995)

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: Into the green

Click on the image for a larger, hi-res version (on Flickr).

After the rain,

The urban duo

Goes into the green.

Trolley Trail in Gilliam Park: City of Atlanta (Kirkwood), Georgia, USA. 28 June 2025.

***************

Dexter Gordon: Cheesecake
Album: Go (Blue Note, 1962)

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: Festival dancers

Click on the image for a larger, hi-res version (on Flickr).

Dance (drink!) to the music.

Inman Park Festival: City of Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 26 April 2025.

Taking place on the last full weekend in April, the Inman Park Festival & Tour of Homes is Atlanta’s largest all-volunteer festival. Organized by the Inman Park Neighborhood Association since the 1970s, the festival has grown to become a full weekend jam-packed with events, including music, kids' activities, a Tour of Homes, a marvelous street parade, an artists’ market, and some of the city’s best people-watching.

***************

Sonny Rollins: Tune Up
Album: Newk's Time (Blue Note, 1959)

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: 3-2-1 Sketch!

Pens down! In a 'sketch-off,' participants had only a short time to draw a portrait of the person sitting across from them.

Atlanta Dogwood Festival in Piedmont Park: Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 13 April 2025.

***************

Sheila Jordan: You Are My Sushine
Album (George Russell): The Outer View (Riverside, 1962)

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: Live. Laugh. Love.

Just a happening-to-be-at-the-right-place-at-the-right-time moment.

The shot is unposed; I think this is a jewelry artist who had just finished using a mural as a product photo backdrop when she turned toward me. The pastel of her clothing seemed to complement the pastel of the mural; "Live. Laugh. Love" was the phrase on her hat. The image isn't askew; it's the city street that was on an incline!

Photo taken during the Decatur Arts Festival in the City of Decatur, Georgia, USA, on 4 May 2024.

***************

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: Jogging in the fog

When both the dew point and the temperature are 9 °C (48 °F), a jogger disappears into a fog bank.

Freedom Park, in the Candler Park neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 3 December 2017.

Freedom Park is is the largest public park in Atlanta, Georgia, comprising 210 acres of linear green space and six miles of hiker/biker trails. The park was created in 1992 from condemned land which originally was to be the Stone Mountain Freeway, a multi-lane divided-highway that would have bisected nine historic neighborhoods and destroyed a string of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.

— Freedom Park and Parkway.

***************

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: Against traffic

A bit of 'busy' street photography for this week's Pic(k) of the Week.

Pedestrians fill the streets, during the Decatur Arts Festival, in the City of Decatur, in Georgia, USA. 6 May 2023.

Was he going the wrong way?

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: Little Red Riding Hoods

Little Red Riding Hoods.
Seeing double.

Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 16 February 2020.

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: ¡Cuidado!

I thought I'd sneak in a beach photo before the weather turns too cold. Here: a father and children at St. Augustine Beach, Florida, USA, on 7 September 2022.

Patience and chance choreographed this image. I noticed a man carefully introducing his newborn to the ocean. As I began snapping photos, his older son blithely ran by. It was a "decisive moment," as the French humanist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson might have labelled it.

Of course, to paraphrase U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, I am no Monsieur Cartier-Bresson.

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: Zen'd by jazz

Jazz was her zen. 

Or was it frozen lemonade? 

Something cool for a hot afternoon.

Listening to the Joe Gransden Big Band during the Inman Park Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, on 28 April 2019.

***************

Something Cool

Something Cool is a 'minor' jazz standard written mid 20th-century by composer/lyricist Billy Barnes and performed —and made famous— by the 'cool-jazz' vocalist, June Christy (1925-1990). It's an elaborate and sad fantasy concocted over the offer of a cool drink on a warm day.

Unlike the song's protagonist, the woman in the photo appears blissfully content.

Play on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xwftoLQxnVk

Well, it's true.

It's just a memory I have.

One I almost forgot

'Cause the weather's so hot,

And I'm feeling so bad,

About a date.

Oh, wait!

I'm such a fool!

He's just a guy,

Who stopped to buy me

Something cool!

-----more-----