We've said it before, and we'll repeat ourselves again: Savannah is a photographer's dream. Whether you're looking for images that are beautiful, amusing, haunting or just plain weird, you hardly have to try. Just lift your camera, click the shutter, and you're almost guaranteed to have a compelling shot. We took tens of thousands of photographs during our three months in the city... here are a few of the better ones.
Orleans Square, on Barnard Street, might as well be called Parking Lot Square. It's one of the spaces which has been most negatively impacted by the development boom of the mid-20th century.
After Johnson, Savannah's second square was laid out in 1733 and named after the Irish politician John Percival, who was involved in the founding of Georgia. Later, however, Percival Square was renamed in honor of Georgia's last royal governor James Wright.
In Savannah, every time you step out of the house, you're going to see something strange and beautiful. In the right frame of mind, the entire city becomes an art gallery... and whether your preferred form of art is architecture, graffiti, fashion or performance art, you're bound to see something you like.
I found myself in the middle of a fevered dream. Alone on the third floor of a house on Monterey Square, I knocked about a room filled with antiques. Chinese vases, broken beds, faded photographs in golden frames with faces I faintly recognized. I climbed steps to the fourth floor and looked out a broken window at the nearby Mercer-Williams House. I shuddered. It was cold and in my haste to leave, I stumbled, nearly crashing into a warped, full-length mirror. "Time to wake up, Mikey".
With three weeks left in Savannah, we already had our flights to Buenos Aires booked and were starting to look forward to our next adventure.
Named after revolutionary hero Nathaniel Greene, whose monument and burial site is at Johnson Square, Greene Square was laid out in the 1790s and developed into the center of Savannah's black population.
It started as a crush. Like gum-smacking girls, giggling together at their lockers while the dreamy blue-eyed quarterback passes by, we were initially just obsessed by Savannah's beauty.
The biggest mistake you can make in Savannah is forgetting to bring your camera with you when you leave the house. Unique photo opportunities spring up like clockwork in this city! Jürgen brought his everywhere -- to the supermarket, on walks with our dog, and even to the bar. You never know when this city is going to surprise you with a great snapshot.
With its Gothic houses, squares and Spanish moss hanging from every tremendous Live Oak, Savannah truly makes a great first impression. But far from skin-deep, its beauty only becomes more captivating the closer you look.
Photographers visiting Savannah are going to have a hard time holding to any sort of schedule... and their partners will have a hard time holding onto their sanity. During our stay in Savannah, it happened often that I lost my patience, and finally ditched Jürgen, who was again snapping photos of a random saxophone, or ivy, or a dog, or another Victorian house. "Have fun, and take your time! I'll be at the bar." I think it saved our relationship.