- [Announcer] Funding for "View Finders" is provided by Troncalli Subaru located on Highway 9 in Cumming.

Visit Troncalli Subaru or find out more online at troncallisubaru.com.

(soft music) - [Announcer 2 ] Here at United Community Bank, we are committed to doing the little things to earn customer trust, one customer at a time.

United Community Bank is a proud sponsor of "View Finders."

(no audio) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - The oldest planned city in the United States.

- The first capitol of Georgia.

- And a missing nuclear bomb.

- This is Savannah.

I'm Chris.

- I'm Paul.

(together) And we're the "View Finders."

(dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music ending) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - I tell you every time I come here I'm just reminded of what a great city it is.

It just has that vibe.

- One of my favorites.

It's one of my favorites.

- Yeah, it's got a vibe to it, you know, you just as soon as you get into the downtown area, it's just you're immersed and with the buildings with the waterfront, with the people, the architecture.

Yeah.

The restaurants.

- The water.

Yeah, this makes it a hit.

- Yeah.

And the history just adds even more to it 'cause it's such an old city.

I know.

It's great.

It's great.

And so I'm excited for us to be here for this episode just 'cause it's a different type of photography.

You know, normally we're out in the woods or on a beach.

- [Paul] A little bit more urban here.

- It's a little more urban.

- Definitely a little more urban.

- You know there's a lot of people around.

But I think the history and the ambiance of it the cobblestone streets, the squares.

I think all that's gonna come together and we're gonna get some good shots.

What are you most excited about?

Like Savannah?

Like what pops in your head when we realized we're gonna be doing it.

- First thing was the culture and the food.

You know how I am.

Got good food down here.

Got good sites.

The river, like I said, you can't go wrong with the water.

You can't go wrong with the water.

Just planning out some preliminary areas, where I think we might be able to get some shots.

I like it.

I like this place.

It's a small old city.

It's southern, but it's got charm, it's got character.

- It's just super historic.

The buildings are so old, the streets are old.

I mean when it was designed, it wasn't designed for all these people and for all this traffic, but I think it works.

And I think that we're gonna get some shots.

I'm actually excited for the nighttime shots too.

I'm excited about a tour tonight to some of the more haunted and mysterious areas of the city.

So we got a lot in store and then we got a sunrise on Tybee.

- You can't beat that.

- That's gonna be cool.

- Sunrise on Tybee can't be beaten.

So Yeah.

- That's gonna be cool.

You know, there's a lot of different elements that are coming together.

I think that they're gonna make this a really cool episode.

And then on top of all that the food around here.

The food is good.

I know, both you and I are on the same page with that.

- I'm ready.

- We're ready for some food.

So, let's get out and explore and see what Savannah has to offer for us.

- Let's go.

- All right man.

(slow acoustic guitar music) - What drew me to Savannah was what I like to think of as an architectural tapestry.

A landscape that's all sort of interwoven together.

And it's not just one time period, it's not just one architectural style.

Savannah has developed over many, many years and it had this great foundation of the Oglethorpe town plan that's basically its skeleton.

And the city developed and grew based on that plan.

And as new architectural styles came in they added to that layer.

And it's all of those things put together that, you know, make Savannah great.

It's not a city that just stopped in time.

It was living and breathing and all these little pieces come together.

And it's not just the architecture it is that urban landscape.

It is our greenscape, our trees, our squares the people, the river, all interweaving together.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - So here we are, our sunset shoot and took a little planning.

- Sure did.

- You know we we came over here this afternoon to scout it out and we weren't even sure if we'd have access at sunset.

- No.

But luckily we asked around, got some answers.

Looks like it's gonna be okay to shoot here.

And to be honest with you, this is the first time I've been to Savannah, and on this side of River Street, to shoot the skyline.

Well, what you can call a skyline of Savannah.

- It's a cool spot.

Like it's a cool perspective.

You get all of River Street in front of you the sun is dropping behind there.

The paddle boats there.

It feels Savannah.

And we just need the sky to cooperate.

- I actually think we need two things, to be honest with you.

I think we need the sky to cooperate, but at the same time we need a little bit of lights from those businesses over there to shine.

To kinda- - [Chris] So the lights need to kinda come on.

- [Paul] Yeah, yeah, because it's just a huge, you know contrast between that sky and then the dark buildings.

- I'm hopeful.

I think this might come together.

This might be a good welcome-to-Savannah sunset for us.

- I think it will.

I think we're in good shape.

- [Chris] All right.

Let's make it happen.

(soft relaxing music) (rich relaxing music) (camera clicking) - And welcome to our last cemetery left in Historic District.

Every other cemetery in Historic District has been built over.

So they become your bars, your restaurants, your hotels.

This is the only one we have left standing.

If you do any research before you come back you're gonna find an unbelievable stat.

There's over 10,000 people buried in Colonial Park Cemetery.

And you look through there, there's like 700 graves.

So how do you get 10,000?

Sherman's famous march took care of a lot of that.

Remember the famous march Atlanta to the sea, destroys everything in his path 'til he gets to Savannah.

So Sherman, he's living at the Green-Meldrim Mansion.

Beautiful mansion, living the high life.

Where do the troops get to stay?

Tents in the cemetery with the dead people.

On the cold, frigid nights, the tents weren't cutting it, so they'd actually break into our family crypts, go down into the ground and sleep with the bodies.

Now I don't know if they got a little bit creeped out, bored, I'm guessing maybe a little bit drunk.

This was a downtime in the war, we had surrendered so there was no fighting.

So there's apparently nothing left to do, but drink, clean your guns and use all of our tombstones for target practice.

That is why there's so few and why they're so spread out.

(soft music) ♪ Underneath the wishing well ♪ ♪ Ten tales ♪ - I set up on this side and I've got the pier kinda coming in to where the sun is rising.

That's kinda how I wanted to compose the shot.

I wanted the pier to kinda lead in from the right hand side of the image.

The sun's gonna come up there.

And one big bonus that I think is what's gonna make this picture even stronger is the clouds are coming, but they kinda cut off right above the pier.

And so I'm doing a 30 second exposure and that's creating this movement of the clouds in the sky.

It's kinda glazing over the water there and making it nice and flat and it's just kind of coming together and it's a really nice, I think, simple, minimalist composition.

- We got some really good color in the sky here.

Got a lot of blue, a lot of pink, little bit of orange in there.

This is the perfect sky to do a sunrise at the beach.

What I'm doing right now is a long exposure.

I got a filter on there.

Oh gosh, forgive me for these bugs, man.

Ooh God.

So it's gonna keep my shutter open for about 10 to 15 seconds.

Get some nice motion in the water and get some cloud movement.

Good grief, these things are killing me.

But I'm really liking what I'm seeing so far.

Really liking what I'm seeing.

This is what you come to the beach for at five o'clock in the morning.

(soft music) ♪ It's glowing through the night ♪ ♪ Ripples of an ancient tome ♪ ♪ All for just a Lincoln's throw ♪ ♪ How can I know ♪ ♪ How can I go ♪ ♪ Burning through a winter storm ♪ ♪ Heads hung for the hundred thousand souls ♪ ♪ It's glowing, it's glowing through the night ♪ (camera clicking) ♪ It's glowing through the night ♪ ♪ It's glowing through the night ♪ ♪ It's glowing through the night ♪ - [Chris] Paul.

That was- - [Paul] Spectacular.

- It was miserable and incredible at the same time.

- We gotta explain it, we gotta explain it.

- We gotta explain.

- The misery is we've got like a a billion gnats out here.

Just chewing away at us.

- A billion is too few.

- Understatement, right?

- It was at least 2 billion gnats.

It was miserable.

Like, I mean they were just feasting on us, on all of us.

- They still are.

I had gnats in my mouth, my ears, my beard.

- Oh, they were so bad.

But the sky made the gnats worth it.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean it took a lot for those gnats to be worth it, but the sky did it, because that sky was incredible.

What do you think, you think you got?

- [Paul] Definitely, it was everything you'd want in a sunrise beach shot.

We had, you know, if you wanna go with the technical aspects you had the leading line with the pier.

You had that nice sky.

You had the movement in the clouds.

Couldn't ask for anything more.

As far as from a photography standpoint.

- Yeah.

It was so worth it.

I mean, we had a 5:00 a.m. alarm.

A little bit of a drive to get out here, so it was an early morning for us, but it was- - [Paul] It was worth it.

- [Chris] Well worth it.

- [Paul] It was worth it.

I think we were were both saying, I think we got some portfolio shots on this one.

- [Chris] Yes.

Oh, I totally feel that way.

And did you spot the the missing nuclear bomb though?

While you're out?

- Ah-ha-ha.

What nuclear bomb were we talking about here?

- I had no idea about this, but I researched it.

Evidently it's true.

In 1958, 2 planes collided.

One of them was carrying a nuclear bomb on it and in order to land safely and perhaps not have it explode on a crash landing they actually dropped it and it was never found.

- Oh man.

- Around here, in the water around Tybee.

They never were able to locate it.

- Maybe I have some radiation in me right now.

- It's pretty wild.

- I'm a superhero now.

- And they said there's still a chance that it has a trigger on it and everything.

It's pretty crazy to think about it.

- All right, let's get outta here.

(both laughing) - Yeah, we probably better get going.

Well hey, let's eat some breakfast first.

- Yeah, then we'll get outta here.

- 'Cause I need some coffee in me all right?

(light music) ♪ It's glowing through the night ♪ ♪ It's glowing, it's glowing through the night ♪ - So we're on our way back from Tybee and we've stopped to photograph Coxspur lighthouse which is another really iconic place in the Savannah area.

It was built in the mid 1800s and it's kind of at the mouth of the Savannah River, as the river transitions into the Atlantic Ocean.

But it's old, it's weathered, it's withstood all types of storms and events and everything.

So it just has that gravitas to it and I think it's pretty photogenic.

So we've lost our earlier beautiful pink hues of the sunrise and that's okay 'cause Paul and I needed to eat breakfast, but it's still a really pretty day.

We've got a blue sky, some kind of wispy white clouds.

And so I'm doing some long exposures to smooth the water and really try to accent the sunlight hitting the lighthouse, which it's doing right now.

And so I'm gonna take another picture, right now while I'm talking to y'all and then the clouds going by and so I'm taking my time waiting for the clouds to get in the right position.

Waiting for the sunlight to hit the lighthouse 'cause it's coming in and out with the clouds.

But it's a really, really pretty setting.

I'm glad we stopped here.

(camera clicking) (soft acoustic music) - Hi everybody.

Welcome to Wormsloe State Historic Site.

My name is Gretchen Greminger and I'm the Manager here at Wormsloe and you are probably seeing one of the more historically important components of Wormsloe.

This is the ruins of Noble Jones's Original Fortified Home.

Noble Jones was one of those first settlers to the colony of Georgia and to Savannah.

He arrived here with General Oglethorpe in 1733 and he was tasked with a pretty important role here with General Oglethorpe.

He was going to be outposted out here on the Isle of Hope.

And he would construct his home outta tabby and he would have those large eight foot plus tall walls made outta tabby as well.

Tabby's pretty significant material that you're gonna see all up and down the coast of Georgia.

It is made out of oyster shell, sand, lime and water.

It's real similar to a concrete material.

Really strong, really sturdy.

So of course when you're needing to complete a fortified home, tabby's a pretty fantastic material to complete your fort walls out of.

A lot of folks that are visiting Savannah.

If you have a hotel room, maybe in the lobby of your of your hotel or in one of the restaurants that you visit early on in Savannah, you're going to see a beautiful canopy of Live Oaks.

That canopy is what draws a lot of folks to Wormsloe.

The Avenue of Oaks here at Wormsloe is about a mile and a half long and they are of Southern Live Oak.

That is, of course, the State Tree of Georgia and there were 400 of them planted in 1891.

So a lot of people are coming to Wormsloe initially for the beauty and then they realize that we have thousands of years of history, not just more recent history of those Live Oaks, but going all the way back to early colonial Georgia as well as even further back.

So there is a wealth of history here, that we really like to share with all of our folks and get people out a little bit into nature, a little bit out of that downtown environment.

So it's a little bit of a refreshing trip.

♪ Caught off guard by a big oak tree ♪ ♪ Growing all by itself in the blue scenery ♪ ♪ And the last leaf falls and floats away ♪ ♪ And on it's way to paradise ♪ (camera clicking) ♪ I wonder will it lay it's head to rest ♪ - Here we are at one of Savannah's icons, Forsyth Park Fountain.

And it's beautiful, as it should be 'cause it's an icon.

But there's a lot of people.

- [Paul] Probably too many.

- There's a lot of people, because it's an icon.

- And it's a beautiful day out here.

- And it's a beautiful day.

- Nice weather.

I mean, you can't blame 'em.

People are out here.

- I can't be mad at it all.

I mean we're here, we're part of the problem.

But we wanna get a picture.

We both do.

There's a lot of compositions but the people are an issue.

So when are we gonna get this picture?

- I think our best idea right now is probably to come back later on tonight.

Or at night, I should say.

Hopefully it'll be lit.

- [Chris] Yeah.

That could be real pretty.

- [Paul] Get a couple of long exposures out here.

- Yeah, we got a little time.

The light's changing.

We can come back at night.

I think we'll end up getting something we like.

- Yeah, I think so too.

- I mean, we almost have to, 'cause it's a Savannah icon.

- Yup, and the flowers are blooming out here.

- Oh, it's beautiful.

It's a beautiful day here.

- Yeah, beautiful park, beautiful city just like you said.

- Yeah man.

Alright, well let's make it happen.

♪ The Monday was moody ♪ ♪ Nothing was time ♪ ♪ We were singing goodbye Earl and strawberry wine ♪ ♪ We had it coming ♪ ♪ When Tuesday was gone ♪ (camera clicking) ♪ The morning seems to fade away ♪ ♪ When night lasts 'til dawn ♪ - My personal favorite thing about Savannah and what I tell everybody when they wanna know what to do is they need to walk.

Savannah is a walkable city.

It's walkable because of our town plan and how we've developed, also 'cause it's a flat.

But that's the best way to experience Savannah.

If you're just in the Historic District, you can walk from one corner to the other in 15 minutes.

But you could also walk out, you know, I walk from home down to work and you know, it's a beautiful, takes me through all these different neighborhoods and time periods and I really encourage you just to get out and walk.

- It's really hard to nail down what my favorite parts of living in Savannah are, but if I had to be forced to.

With the beautiful old architecture, all the historic squares, there's just so much history here.

You're 10 minutes from the ocean if you want the beach.

We have five star restaurants here and it's such a dog-friendly, animal-friendly area.

I think really the Historic District all the beautiful old architecture.

The fact that if you live in Historic District you can't change the outside of your building without permission.

They want everything to stay looking just like it did back in the late 1800s.

So the Historic District will always look this way and it gives us that just kind of old world charm that a lot of cities don't have anymore.

- I think there's a lot of really fantastic hidden secrets here in Savannah.

We have the best of everything.

Savannah is a good size city, so there's a lot to explore.

But again, I'm at Wormsloe, there's lots of nature here.

We're less than 20 minutes from downtown Savannah and we've got this 1200 plus acre natural environment that we can give to our locals.

And I think that that is a really great atmosphere and environment, that not a lot of folks have the opportunity to take advantage of.

So it's really the best of both worlds.

You're in the country but you're also in the city.

♪ Smoke filled the room and my lungs ♪ ♪ Can't find the bar for the drugs ♪ ♪ I lost my wallet and keys ♪ ♪ There were no strangers to me ♪ (camera clicking) ♪ The walls were reflections of us in our prime ♪ - Between the food, the history.

We got some good photos.

We learned a lot and we walked a lot.

I mean my legs are feeling it.

- Yeah, this was a workout.

This was definitely a workout.

Probably a much needed one after what we've been eating.

- Yeah, exactly, exactly.

So it was a different animal, because we're in an urban environment.

We gotta contend with people and cars.

And sounds and we can't control, we don't have a good line of sight sometimes, like we experience tonight with our sunset.

We couldn't quite line things up like we wanted to.

Plus the sky didn't really quite cooperate - Exactly.

- But overall, between our sunrise this morning on Tybee.

- You couldn't beat that sunrise.

- [Chris] Just amazing.

- [Paul] You couldn't beat that sunrise this morning.

Yeah.

- [Chris] You know, some of our night photography, the fountain and then the things that we've learned.

It was a cool experience.

- [Paul] Yeah, I enjoyed it.

- Yeah, any excuse.

- I didn't like the bugs, though.

- [Chris] I got no fewer than a hundred red bumps on arms right now.

- Yeah.

It looks like I got the measles, man.

(Chris laughing) Chickenpox or something.

- But what's your best memory of this?

- This morning.

- This morning.

- Actually got a really good shot.

Couple of good shots.

And I think I made a big rookie mistake.

- Okay, let's hear it.

- Last night when we were shooting.

I had an ND filter on here and typically when I use that deep ND filter I shut the auto focus off on my lenses, so that it doesn't try to hunt for new focus.

- Ah.

Yeah.

- And I woke up this morning, just hopped in the car, went out to set up.

- [Chris] Early.

Groggy.

- [Paul] Yeah, I forgot to put the auto focus back on there.

- [Chris] I hear ya.

- But after I discovered the mistake, switched it back, got a shot or two.

- You were able to salvage a few.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I think man, certainly Tybee was great just 'cause the sky was so good and it just all came together.

That pier was great.

And then I actually got, Coxspur was kind of like a little hidden gem.

I mean it wasn't a hidden gem, but I think got an image that I like there.

It's a neat setting.

It's got that history.

So I did kind of a minimalist shot with that.

But I'm excited to get home and just pull these up on the screen.

- [Paul] See what's up on that one, yeah.

- See what it turned up with.

Because I've taken a lot of images all over the place.

I tell you what, before we get outta here, I think we need to have one last good meal.

Maybe, I'm thinking seafood.

- One last good meal?

We probably need to fast after everything we've been eating in this place.

(Chris laughing) - Yeah, no.

I'm thinking seafood.

I don't know about you.

- You can't come to Savannah and not get seafood.

You can't do that.

- Gotta get some seafood, right?

- Yeah.

- So let's go get a nice final meal here, you know get some good seafood and then get on the road outta here and see what types of pictures we got.

- You got it, buddy.

Let's go.

- All right, let's go.

♪ Hollows in the woods call out ♪ ♪ Trails up mountains climb ♪ ♪ Waves and sand keep beat and time ♪ ♪ Mossy blankets, swirling streams ♪ ♪ Over rocks and dirt ♪ ♪ Run at pace with all the earth ♪ ♪ Could we capture nature's wonder ♪ ♪ Find our way to getting lost ♪ ♪ Freeze a frame to save forever ♪ ♪ Adventure worth the cost ♪ ♪ Bees and dandelion grain ♪ ♪ Dance in sun-soaked fields ♪ ♪ Wind and gleam together yield ♪ ♪ Pocket worries fade to dim ♪ ♪ Wait on focus new ♪ ♪ Wild is coming into view ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Hues on fire in the clouds ♪ ♪ Perfectly exposed ♪ ♪ A song first played, and then composed ♪ ♪ Day is dying, dark will come ♪ ♪ Still we look for sight ♪ ♪ So we wander, chasing light ♪ ♪ Could we capture nature's wonder ♪ - [Announcer] Funding for "View Finders" is provided by Troncalli Subaru.

Located on Highway 9 in Cumming.

Visit Troncalli Subaru or find out more online at troncallisubaru.com.

(light music) - [Announcer 2] Here at United Community Bank, we are committed to doing the little things to earn customer trust, one customer at a time.

United Community Bank is a proud sponsor of "View Finders."