Cleveland photographer – with assist from wife – wins Mountain Traveler cover contest

If it weren’t for his wife, Joe Gralton of Cleveland, the winner of Community Newspaper Inc.’s cover photo contest for the 2019 fall edition of The Mountain Traveler magazine, would never have entered the contest.

“[My wife] threw it to me and said ‘you have some really good pictures, and I really want you to do this,’” he said. “So I give her all the credit, because otherwise I would’ve just overlooked it and just kept going on my day.”

The winning photo was taken at Preacher’s Rock on the Appalachian Trail at the border of Lumpkin and Union counties, Gralton said. The photo was taken with his iPhone on Aug. 17, 2019, at sunrise.

“We love to travel,” he said. “We love to get out in the woods. I feel that I get what most people don’t see. The farther out you go and the more off grid, the more private the experience is.”

The couple does a lot of backpacking, hiking, camping, mountain biking, kayaking and rock climbing – and enjoying the natural beauty around them.

“I just love taking photos of nature and landscapes personally for my own collection,” Gralton said. “We were in Peru last year, Hawaii the year before that, so we hiked a lot of stuff out there.”

And for Gralton, it was perfect timing when he found out he won, because he was at the “happiest place” in the world.

“I was in a queue at Disney, standing in line,” he said. “My phone vibrated, so I just clicked a button to shut it off since we were in line. I knew I had a voicemail, but it was so loud I was like, I’ll look at it when we’re off the ride and see who is calling me.”

Afterward, he began to read his phone’s transcription of the voicemail.

“My wife saw my expression on my face, and she was like ‘What?’ and I showed her,” Gralton says. “ She was like ‘I told you’ and started tugging on me. So yes, I was very, very surprised. It really made my day.”

A twice-annual publication, published in the summer and fall, The Mountain Traveler is a full-color regional visitor and travel guide for Northeast Georgia.

In an effort to continue focusing on local talent, CNI Regional Publisher Alan Ne- Smith invited artists and photographers to submit his or her vision of the Northeast Georgia mountains.

“We had great participation in our fall cover contest,” NeSmith says. “With more than 90 entries to choose from, we were able to narrow the photos down to five and then finally select Joe’s photo. Preacher’s Rock is a favorite destination of hikers and Joe’s shot is just what a mountain traveler is searching to see.”

There will be 30,000 copies of this free magazine distributed to 300 locations throughout the Northeast Georgia region during fall 2019.