Local photographer Lani Edwards decided to publish a book of photographs illustrating the natural beauty of Ohio. The title is “Intimate Ohio.”

The goal was to capture the beauty while it still resonated.

"If you live anywhere for any extended amount of time, you tend to become mute to the beauty around you," she told the Mount Vernon News. "I wanted to do the book before I became jaded."

Originally from South Africa, Edwards and her husband had lived in Columbus before relocating to Mount Vernon in 2020.

They found the rural atmosphere was to their liking.

“Since we could both work from home, we drove around and the few times we drove through Mount Vernon, it just felt right,” Edwards said.

So they decided to buy a house in Apple Valley.

One of the things she finds most beautiful in Ohio is the change of seasons, a stark contrast to South Africa.

She also loves the rural area of the state with old barns and corn fields and the beauty of Amish country.

"The Amish pictures to me scream Ohio," she said.

She also finds beauty in the winter and snow even though she hates the cold.

"Winter makes for beautiful, beautiful simplistic, very minimalist pictures," Edwards said. "It gets rid of all the noise, the messiness of most landscapes."

She took a picture in Holmes County of an Amish buggy.

"It was snowing, so you could see the snowflakes," she said. "That's one of my favorite pictures."

When she began considering a book, she couldn't find much out there about Ohio and its beauty.

"Nothing that I could kind was a coffee-table book about Ohio," she said. "People don't flock to Ohio for holiday, for vacation."

The book and Edwards' photographs can be purchased at Kudos Gallery, an artists’ cooperative, in downtown Mount Vernon, and from Edwards’ website.