Kim Hubbard began photographing flowers and rocks along Towerway Drive in Brainerd at the age of four.
Half a century later, the former National Geographic photo editor still rolls around in the forest, attracting ticks and grass mites while also taking delicate close-ups of trefoil and Solomon’s seals.
For two years, Hubbard, 55, has been pointing a large Nikon macro lens at the flora of Lookout Mountain and beyond. It’s a project that began as a simple 12-photo assignment for the magnificent new Cloudland at McLemore Resort in Rising Fawn, Georgia, and evolved into a nature photographer’s dream.
At last count, about 600 of Hubbard’s photos — including a 25-foot-wide mural of DeSoto Falls in the hotel’s gym — hung in the 245-room Hilton resort hotel, which offers stunning views of McLemore Cove. Other photos are as small as 5 feet by 7 feet — that’s 5 by 7 feet. Some are black and white, some are color.
“It’s literally the culmination of my entire career,” Hubbard, a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who came home a few years ago to help care for her now-deceased father, said in an interview. “This is like I had a dream. … It’s like they built a hotel just to showcase my work.”
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The admiration is apparently mutual. IV Whitman, executive vice president of marketing for Scenic Land Co., the developers of the resort hotel, said the search for someone to lead the arts program at Cloudland at McLemore Resort took more than a year. He said Hubbard met the hotel’s checklist. The owners wanted someone from the area, someone who knew their craft (in this case, photography) and someone who understood the spirit of the mountain property.
Contributed photo / The photographic work of Chattanooga native Kim Hubbard hangs at the reception desk of the Cloudland Hotel in the McLemore Resort.“The reaction to Kim’s work was exactly what we expected: awe,” Whitman said in an email. “It’s an amazing thing when guests notice the art in their hotel. Most people don’t because most (hotel art) is forgettable. Kim’s work is deeply beautiful and will stand the test of time.”
When Hubbard returned home to care for her father, who was in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease, nature photography was her outlet.
“One of the few things we could do together was photograph flowers,” she said.
Hubbard said she has shared the hobby with her father throughout her life and comes from a long line of flower gardeners.
“My paternal and maternal grandparents had flower gardens,” she said, “and my mother had beautiful rose gardens for years.”
Hubbard internalized this love of natural beauty, which was a guiding light in her career. In addition to her work at National Geographic, she also worked for a long time for the National Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation.
When a friend mentioned that Cloudland was looking for an artist to display his work on the new Hilton site, Hubbard was intrigued. She had thousands of images of native flowers that could be enlarged and framed, and she had a particular fondness for the lesser-known flowering plants native to the southern Appalachian region.
“I love the tiny flowers that no one appreciates,” she said. “Every flower in the hotel is native. That was important to me. I wanted to represent species that were overlooked.”
“I put on my boots and hiked around Lookout Mountain,” she continued. “I spent a lot of time at Reflection Riding, Lula Falls, Cloudland Canyon, everywhere.”
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Hubbard also spent many days in the Pocket, a wilderness area in Walker County accessible via Hog Jowl Road. The Pocket is famous for the Shirley Miller Wildflower Trail, a floral photographer’s paradise that includes more than 50 different species of wildflowers, such as bluebells, yellow mandarins, and toadstools. Some of Hubbard’s photos of the Pocket hang in vivid color near the hotel entrance. The grounds have become a popular selfie spot for hotel guests.
Not all of Hubbard’s photos on display at Cloudland are flowers. The hotel’s spa is decorated with relaxing photos of Christmas ferns. The hotel’s fitness area is adorned with the DeSoto Falls mural, which almost looks like it could create mist in the room. Elsewhere in the hotel, there are also enlarged bird nests, pine cones and sandhill cranes on the wing.
The very first photograph Hubbard shot specifically for the project is a haunting black-and-white photo of Lula Falls that looks like it was taken during the Civil War.
One night, Hubbard said, while a guest at the resort, she sat in bed looking at her own artwork on the wall of her guest room and felt a surge of happiness. She was aware of her blessings: she had lived a full life, had a career, and fulfilled a childhood destiny.
Life Stories appears Mondays. Contact Mark Kennedy at [email protected] or 423-757-6645.
Contributed Photo / A wall-sized photograph of DeSoto Falls adorns the practice area of the Cloudland Hotel at McLemore Resort.
