Two encounters with a man who shaped a university and a peninsula

I learned this week that Ambassador James T. Laney, President Emeritus of Emory University, passed away at the age of 98. Over the years, my camera crossed paths with his twice — and both times, I came away with a deeper sense of just how much history one person can carry into a room.

On the Set of Faith and the City

The first photo here is from the set of Faith and the City, a TV forum my wife Dorie Griggs produced on the AIB network in Atlanta. On July 8, 2003, we brought Ambassador Laney together with fellow Korea ambassador Andrew Young, host Steen Miles, Rev. Dr. Insik Kim of the Presbyterian Church USA, and Dr. Han Park of the University of Georgia for a conversation on North and South Korea and the global community.

It was cutting-edge content for its time — two men who had each represented the United States on the Korean peninsula, sitting across from each other, unpacking the tangled relationships among North Korea, South Korea, China, and the U.S. Ambassador Laney had served as U.S. Ambassador to South Korea from 1993 to 1996, and he was there for the fraught moment in 1994 when tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program escalated to the brink — working alongside Presidents Clinton and Carter to help pull the region back from conflict. Hearing him talk through that history in the studio, with the calm authority of someone who had actually lived it, is a memory I still carry.

Founder’s Day Symposium, 2006

The second photo comes from March 15, 2006, at the Founder’s Day Symposium honoring Jesse Hill Jr., held at the Biltmore in Atlanta. Jesse Hill Jr. was himself a giant of Atlanta’s civil rights and business history — longtime president of Atlanta Life Insurance Company, the first African American to lead a major city’s chamber of commerce, and a man whose fingerprints were on nearly every major civic movement in the city for half a century. That Ambassador Laney was there to help honor him says something about the circles Laney moved in and the respect he commanded across Atlanta’s civic life.

A Life That Shaped Institutions

Before diplomacy, Laney spent 16 years as Emory’s 17th president, from 1977 to 1993 — a tenure Emory credits with the most significant transformation in the university’s history, from a regional teaching college into a major national research university. On his watch, Emory received the landmark $105 million gift from Robert W. Woodruff and his brother George, at the time the largest philanthropic investment ever made in an American university. He recruited President Jimmy Carter to the faculty, launched a new school of public health, and helped set Emory on the path to national prominence. In 2009, Emory renamed its graduate school in his honor — the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies.

His connection to Korea ran even deeper than his ambassadorship. He first went there in 1947 as a young Army officer, returned in the late 1950s as a Methodist missionary and professor at Yonsei University, and spent decades as one of America’s most trusted voices on U.S.–Korea relations, right up through a Building Bridges Award he received earlier this year from the Pacific Century Institute.

I’m grateful my camera was in the room for even a small piece of that story. Rest well, Ambassador.

Seven letters. All caps. Handwritten on a piece of yellow construction paper and taped above a locker room door with athletic tape, crooked on purpose.

That’s the “Believe” sign from Ted Lasso — one of the most talked-about props in recent television. Ted put it up during his first week coaching AFC Richmond, and it became something closer to scripture than decor. When the team’s spirit cracked, players touched it on their way to the pitch. When Nate, wrestling with his own insecurity, tore it in half and dropped it on Ted’s desk, the show made something visible that most of us feel but rarely say out loud: belief is fragile, and someone can wound you by wounding what you believe in.

But here’s what I keep coming back to. In season three, the sign starts peeling off the wall on its own — no villain required, just time and tape and gravity. Ted takes it down himself and tells the team something worth sitting with: belief was never in the paper. It comes from the heart, the head, the gut — and it gets crowded out by the ordinary junk we all carry: envy, fear, shame. The sign was never the point. It was a pointer.

A Word Older Than the Locker Room

Sports teams didn’t wait for Ted Lasso to figure this out. Locker rooms have hung that word, or something like it, for generations — because coaches have always known that talent isn’t enough. A team has to believe it belongs on the field before it can win on it. The Atlanta Falcons even hung their own BELIEVE sign in a press conference room after a comeback win, borrowing straight from the show, because the metaphor was already doing real work in their locker room before the cameras caught it. Belief, it turns out, is a discipline you practice before it’s a feeling you have.

And long before any of us understood locker rooms or television, most of us were handed our first lesson in belief on a much smaller stage: a chimney, a plate of cookies, and a jolly stranger who somehow knew whether we’d been good. Santa Claus asks something of children that Ted Lasso asks of grown men in cleats — believe in something you cannot verify, because believing changes how you move through the season.

Christian faith asks for something similar, though it names it more plainly. Faith, as the New Testament puts it, is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Believers don’t arrive at their faith through a spreadsheet of proof. They choose it — again and again, especially on the days the evidence points the other way.

The Thread That Connects All of It

Put these side by side — a torn locker room poster, a chimney story, a centuries-old confession of faith — and a pattern emerges. In every case, someone is being asked to trust a future they can’t yet see, and often the visible evidence argues against them. The team is down at halftime. The presents haven’t appeared yet. The prayer hasn’t been answered yet. And still: believe.

That’s not naivety. It’s a decision about which truths will steer you when the facts are incomplete — which they always are, because none of us gets to see how our story ends while we’re still living it.

Storytellers understand this instinct better than almost anyone, because it’s the same posture a story asks of its reader. Every great story — whether it’s a novel, a docuseries, or a photo essay — asks the audience to believe in a character before that character has proven themselves. We root for the protagonist before we know if they’ll succeed, because the story has given us a reason to trust the journey even without knowing the ending. That’s the covenant between storyteller and audience: I don’t know exactly how this turns out, but I trust it’s going somewhere worth following. It’s the same covenant Ted Lasso made with a locker room, the same one Santa makes with a five-year-old, the same one faith makes with the unseen.

How We Practice Believing

Belief that only shows up when the evidence is convenient isn’t really belief — it’s just agreement. The kind of belief that gets a losing team through a season or a person through a hard year has to be practiced. Here’s a working list of what that practice looks like:

1. Name what you believe, out loud or on paper. Ted’s sign worked partly because it was written down and visible. Vague hope evaporates; a stated belief can be returned to.
2. Expect it to get torn. Something will test what you believe — a loss, a doubt, a person who tears it in half. That’s not proof it was wrong. It’s proof it mattered enough to attack.
3. Understand the object was never the point. The sign, the tradition, the ritual — these are pointers, not the thing itself. When Ted’s sign started peeling on its own, he didn’t replace it. He located belief back inside the people who needed it.
4. Clear out what crowds’ beliefs. Coach Lasso named his own list: envy, fear, shame. Most of us are carrying a version of that list, and it’s worth naming yours specifically, because vague junk is harder to clear than named junk.
5. Choose it again, especially when the score is against you. Belief proven only in victory isn’t belief — it’s a victory lap. The real practice happens at halftime, down two goals, when quitting would be easier and more defensible.
6. Let community carry you when your own belief runs thin. Isaac touching the sign, followed by the rest of the team — nobody has to believe alone. Faith communities, teammates, and even an audience following a story all lend each other belief on days when it’s in short supply.
7. Look for the unseen truths that have already proven reliable. Belief isn’t a blind leap into nothing — it’s usually built on some track record, some prior faithfulness, some pattern that’s held before. Santa’s promise felt believable to a child because someone trustworthy told them about it.

None of us can see the whole story we’re living. We get this scene, this chapter, this season — and we’re asked, again and again, to decide what we’ll trust to guide the next choice. Maybe that’s why a torn piece of yellow paper became one of the most talked-about props on television. It wasn’t really about football, or even about a fictional coach. It was about all of us, standing in front of our own locker room door, deciding — one more time — to believe.

ROSWELL, Ga. — A 53-foot tractor-trailer turned traveling museum parked at Blessed Trinity High School on Aug. 5, giving visitors an immersive look at poverty in America and the people working to address it.

The People of Hope Museum, a nationwide initiative from Catholic Charities USA, made its two-day metro Atlanta stop Aug. 4-5, hosted by Catholic Charities Atlanta. Inside the retrofitted trailer, visitors watched touchscreen video stories from Catholic Charities staff and volunteers across the country, tried an interactive poverty simulation, and could record their own stories of hope and service in an on-site studio.

“It allows you to make some of the choices that they have to make every day,” Vanessa Russell, CEO of Catholic Charities Atlanta, said of the simulation, which asks visitors to weigh grocery trips, bills and other tradeoffs faced by families living on limited incomes.

The exhibit is part of a national storytelling campaign called “People of Hope: Faith-Filled Stories of Neighbors Helping Neighbors,” built around more than 40 professionally produced video accounts and supported by a $5 million grant from the Lilly Endowment. Since launching earlier this year, the museum has traveled to more than a dozen cities, including Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Hartford and Cleveland, with stops planned through 2027 in more than 150 communities nationwide.

Among those on hand in Roswell was Bishop John Tran, an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Atlanta, who told local reporters he benefited from Catholic Charities himself in 1975 after his family arrived in the United States from Vietnam.

“Too many of our brothers and sisters live in poverty, and it’s important for us to be able to care for them as best we can,” Tran said.

Catholic Charities Atlanta serves about 11,000 people a year across the metro area. Organizers said the museum’s goal is less about statistics and more about connection — helping visitors see poverty and service through individual stories rather than numbers alone.

Admission to the museum was free. The exhibit is recommended for visitors aged 14 and older, as some content addresses sensitive themes related to poverty and hardship.

The People of Hope Museum’s next stops are Knoxville, Tennessee, Aug. 7-8, followed by Chattanooga, Memphis, and cities across Oklahoma later this month.

I have a folder on my hard drive I only half-jokingly call the graveyard. It’s full of stories I love — a wildlife photographer tracking recovery species through North Atlanta neighborhoods. This hairstylist has turned herself into the region’s go-to Santa hair specialist every December, a ballplayer down the street who happened to be the first designated hitter in Major League history. Every one of them is a good story. Most of them sat in that folder for months before they ever ran anywhere.

That gap — between having a good story and having somewhere for it to live — is the part nobody warns you about. And it’s the same gap whether you’re a photographer with a great frame, a nonprofit with a great program, or a business with a great customer story. The story existing isn’t the hard part. Finding it a home is.

The story isn’t finished until it has a home.

We tend to treat “the story” and “the pitch” as two separate jobs — first you go find and shoot the story, then, separately, you go try to sell it. I’ve come to think that’s backward. A story that has no audience yet isn’t really finished. It’s raw material. The pitch is where the last bit of the work actually happens, because the pitch is where you decide who this is for and why it matters to them specifically.

That reframe changes how I work. Instead of “I found a great story, now who wants it,” the question up front becomes “who is missing this story, and what do they need it to do for them?” Different question, different result.

The same subject, told three different ways.

Here’s the part that took me the longest to accept: you will pitch the same story to many outlets before one of them says yes, and it usually can’t be the same pitch each time.

A wildlife recovery story pitched to a nature-photography audience is about the technical patience of the tracking and the rarity of the species. Pitched to a regional lifestyle magazine, it’s about a neighbor doing something quietly remarkable in their own backyard. Same photographer, same animals, same months of fieldwork — different hook, because the two audiences are showing up with different questions in their heads. One wants craft. The other wants a neighbor they can root for.

Sometimes the subject even shifts entirely while the storyline stays put. A story about a stylist’s holiday specialty can be a small-business feature, a seasonal lifestyle piece, or a “here’s how she built a niche” business story — same person, three different reasons for a reader to care—knowing which reason belongs to which outlet is half the job.

This isn’t compromising the story. It’s translating it. A good translator doesn’t change what was true — they change what lands.

Bring the reader something to see before you ask them to read.

One thing I believe more every year: if you’re a photographer or videographer pitching a story, don’t send a paragraph and ask an editor to imagine it. Send a small visual alongside the pitch — a single frame, a short reel, a simple mood board. Editors and clients are making a quick judgment about whether this story looks like something before they’ll invest the time to read why it matters. Give them that in three seconds, and the words you send after get read differently.

Sometimes it’s not a no — it’s a not yet.

There’s a version of rejection that has nothing to do with the story or the pitch at all. An outlet just ran something similar last month. A client has a reason they can’t say out loud — a budget freeze, a leadership change, or a different priority eating up all the oxygen this quarter. You’ll rarely be told this plainly. You’ll get a pass, and it will feel exactly like the pass you got when the pitch itself was wrong.

I’ve learned to hold both possibilities at once instead of assuming the worst one. A story can be genuinely right for an outlet and still be untimely for it. That’s not a flaw in the story — it’s a season it hasn’t reached yet. The stylist’s Santa-hair story I mentioned earlier is a good example: it has a built-in calendar. Pitch it in July, and it reads as odd. Pitch it in October, and it reads as timely—same story, same outlet, different month, completely different reception.

The practical move is to keep a short list going of good stories but early, and revisit it on a schedule rather than a whim — quarterly, or whenever a season or news cycle turns in its favor. A story that got a “not now” this spring might be exactly what an editor needs in November.

Pitching to clients is the same problem wearing a different shirt

Most of my work doesn’t come from me finishing a story and then shopping it. It comes from pitching a client on a story I believe they should let me tell — before it exists. That’s a harder version of the same problem, because now the “audience” I’m finding a home for the story with is also the one deciding whether to pay for it.

The instinct is to lead with what I can do — the camera work, the credentials, forty years of this. But the pitch that actually lands is the one that leads with their story and their audience: here’s a story your customers or your community would want, here’s roughly what it would look like, here’s why now. I’m not selling a service. I’m handing them a finished-looking idea and letting them see themselves as the outlet for it.

The rejection isn’t the verdict on the story.

If there’s one thing worth saying plainly to anyone doing this work: getting passed over by the third or fourth outlet doesn’t mean the story was wrong. It usually means you hadn’t yet found the audience whose question it answers. Keep the subject. Keep the truth of it. Change who you’re telling it to, and which part you lead with.

The story was never really finished sitting in my folder. It gets finished the moment someone reads it and thinks, “That’s for me.”

For nearly 20 years, I have been writing at PictureStoryteller.com.

When I started the site around 2006, the purpose was pretty simple. I was teaching photography, particularly lighting and the business of photography, and I wanted my students to have a place they could return to after class. I could share what I was learning, examples of my work, lessons from assignments, and ideas that might help another photographer.

Over the years, something happened that I didn’t necessarily plan.

The blog grew up.

What began as a photography resource became a collection of more than 2,000 posts exploring photography, photojournalism, storytelling, communication, business, teaching, leadership, faith, purpose, and the people I’ve encountered along the way.

And I’ve come to realize that the site has become broader than the word photographer suggests.

Photography Is Still at the Center

I’m not walking away from photography.

Photography has been part of my life for more than 40 years. It is how I learned to pay attention. It taught me to slow down, look carefully, anticipate moments, and become curious about people.

But photography has always been more than making pictures for me.

The camera is a tool.

The photograph is a doorway.

The real question has always been:

What is the story behind the picture, and why should anyone care?

That question has taken me places I never expected.

It has led me into photojournalism, corporate communications, nonprofit work, teaching, organizational storytelling, interviews and conversations with people from all kinds of backgrounds.

It has also taught me that the best photographs often begin long before the camera comes out.

They begin with curiosity.

They begin with listening.

They begin with understanding people.

The Story Isn’t About Me

One of the things I’ve learned through all of this is that storytelling isn’t really about the storyteller.

It’s about the audience.

Organizations often tell the stories they want to tell. Photographers sometimes make the photographs they want to make. Writers can become fascinated with what they have to say.

But effective storytelling asks a different question:

What does the audience need to see, understand, or feel?

That changes everything.

It changes how I approach a portrait.

It changes how I photograph a firefighter.

It changes how I tell a business’s story.

It changes how I interview someone.

And it changes how I think about this website.

Picture Storyteller won’t simply be a place where I write about cameras, lenses, and lighting.

Those things will still be here.

But they’re part of a much larger conversation.

What Comes Next

In the future, I want Picture Storyteller to explore the intersection of people, stories, photography, and communication.

There will still be photography education and discussions about technique.

There will still be photojournalism.

There will still be stories about the business of photography.

But I also want to explore questions like:

How do we tell better stories?

How do we become more curious?

How do we listen to people?

How do organizations communicate who they really are?

How can a photograph help someone understand something they might otherwise miss?

What does it mean to build a meaningful creative career?

What can failure, disappointment, aging, and change teach us?

And perhaps most importantly:

How do we tell stories that matter to the people who need to hear them?

Five Doors Into the Story

As Picture Storyteller evolves, I’m thinking about the site through several connected areas.

Stories

People, organizations, communities and experiences.

These are the stories that remind us that behind every organization, event, or issue are real people.

Seeing

Photography, photojournalism, lighting and visual storytelling.

This is where the craft still matters. I’ll continue sharing what I’ve learned about making photographs and helping other photographers develop their ability to see.

Communicating

How organizations and individuals use stories, photography, and video to connect with their audiences.

A good photograph isn’t necessarily a good communication tool. The question is whether the image helps achieve the story’s purpose.

The Business of Storytelling

The realities of making a living as a creative professional.

Pricing. Marketing. Clients. Careers. Finding work. Losing work. Adapting. Learning. Starting over.

These are conversations I’ve been having for decades, and I don’t think they’re going away.

Teaching

Lessons for photographers, storytellers and communicators.

I’ve spent a significant part of my career teaching. Teaching forces me to examine what I know—and what I don’t know.

Sometimes the best way to understand something is to try to explain it to someone else.

The Photograph Is the Doorway

There is an idea that keeps coming back to me:

The photograph is the doorway into the story.

A photograph can get our attention.

But then what?

What happens when we become curious about the person in the photograph?

What happens when we learn what happened before that moment?

What happens when we discover the reason someone does what they do?

What happens when we realize that someone else’s experience has something to teach us about our own?

That’s where storytelling becomes more interesting than photography alone.

The image opens the door.

The story invites us inside.

A More Honest Description of What I Do

For a long time, the easiest way to describe myself was:

I’m a photographer.

That’s still true.

But it isn’t the whole truth.

I’m a photographer.

I’m a photojournalist.

I’m a storyteller.

I’m a teacher.

I’m a communicator.

And after decades of doing all of those things, I’m increasingly interested in how they fit together.

Photography taught me how to see.

Photojournalism taught me how to observe.

Storytelling taught me how to listen.

Teaching taught me how to explain.

Working with organizations taught me how important it is to understand the audience.

And life has taught me that the most interesting stories usually aren’t about perfect people having perfect experiences.

They’re about people figuring things out.

Why Keep Writing?

I’ve occasionally wondered whether I should continue writing this blog.

There are plenty of places to post photographs now. Social media moves faster. Artificial intelligence is changing how images are created. The traditional photography business continues to evolve.

So why maintain a blog that has been around for nearly two decades?

Because I don’t think the need for stories is going away.

If anything, I think it is becoming more important.

Images surround us.

We are surrounded by information.

Competing narratives surround us.

What we need isn’t simply more content.

We need better stories.

Stories that help us understand people.

Stories that create curiosity rather than division.

Stories that allow us to see something from another person’s perspective.

Stories that remind us that behind the statistics, organizations, headlines, and photographs are human beings.

That’s the kind of storytelling I want to keep exploring.

What’s Next for Picture Storyteller

So Picture Storyteller is evolving.

Not away from photography.

Through photography and beyond it.

The camera will still be part of the conversation.

So will lighting.

So will photojournalism.

So will the business of photography.

But the larger subject is becoming clearer to me:

People. Stories. Seeing. Listening. Communicating.

For nearly 20 years, I’ve been documenting what I’ve learned.

Now I want to be more intentional about bringing those lessons together.

Picture Storyteller is becoming a place to explore how we see, how we listen, how we tell stories, and how those stories can help people connect.

The tagline still feels right:

Human Eyes. Honest Stories.

Because that’s ultimately what I’ve been trying to do all along.

Not simply make better photographs.

See better. Listen better. Tell better stories.

And hopefully help other people do the same.

A visually stunning photograph that nobody can search for, organize, or locate is a photo that loses its utility the moment it is archived. In the digital age, a great image is only half the equation—the other half is data. Whether you are managing a massive personal portfolio or delivering images to a client, knowing exactly where a photo was taken is critical.

This is especially vital for humanitarian photography, documentary work, and NGO coverage. Organizations often manage thousands of assets from global projects; without embedded location metadata, your critical images can easily get lost in a digital void. Having precise coordinates baked directly into your image files allows organizations to search for images by region instantly, verify location authenticity, and drastically speed up the process of writing accurate, fact-based captions.

While only a few modern cameras have built-in GPS chips due to battery and size constraints, almost every major brand offers a workaround: using your Smartphone’s GPS via Bluetooth.

Here is exactly how Nikon, Sony, Canon, Fujifilm, OM System (Olympus), and Leica handle mobile geotagging, along with the specific apps you need to download.

The Ultimate Travel Secret: GPS Works in Airplane Mode

Before diving into the brands, there is a massive misconception that you need a cellular signal or Wi-Fi for this to work. You do not.

Your Smartphone has a dedicated, hardware-based GPS receiver that operates entirely independently of cellular data networks. You can put your phone into Airplane Mode and turn Wi-Fi completely off to save battery or comply with flight regulations, and your phone will still track your precise coordinates. As long as your phone’s Bluetooth remains enabled to connect to your camera, you can geotag your photos in the deep back-country, in remote villages, or in foreign countries without using a single megabyte of data or roaming.

1. Nikon (SnapBridge)

Nikon was one of the early pioneers of seamless mobile geotagging using low-energy Bluetooth.

• The App: Nikon SnapBridge
• How it works: Once you pair your camera to your phone via Bluetooth, open the app, go to the Connect tab, and toggle on Auto link, then Location data. On your camera, ensure the location data feature is set to download from the smart device.
• The Nuance: SnapBridge is highly regarded for its stability. It can automatically pull your phone’s GPS data in the background, even when your phone is locked, and stamp coordinates onto your files exactly when the shutter clicks.

2. Sony (Creators’ App)

Sony uses a continuous Bluetooth handshake to keep your location data up to date as you move.

• The App: Sony Creators’ App (or Imaging Edge Mobile for older cameras).
• How it works: Pair your camera to the app via Bluetooth. Inside the app, toggle on Location Information Linkage by going to the[Cameras] screen, and tap [Others] → [Setup] → [Location Information Linkage] and switch on  Location Information Linkage, Auto Time Correction, and Auto Area Adjustment. You may also need to go to your camera’s network menu and turn Location Info. Link to On.
• The Nuance: For iOS and Android to allow continuous tracking in your pocket, you must set your phone’s location permission for the Creators’ App to “Allow all the time” rather than “Only while using the app.” And in the Creators’ App, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the [Cameras] screen, then set Connection with Camera in Background to Keep connection.

4. Canon (Camera Connect)

Canon offers real-time coordinate stamping as long as the mobile application remains active in your phone’s memory.

• The App: Canon Camera Connect
• How it works: Establish a Bluetooth connection between your camera and Smartphone. In the app settings, enable Location Information. Next, dive into your camera’s yellow Setup menu, find the GPS settings, and set the GPS device to Smartphone.
• The Nuance: Canon cameras require a constant active connection to stamp coordinates on the fly. If your phone aggressively kills background apps to save battery, you may need to reopen the app occasionally during a shoot.

5. Fujifilm (FUJIFILM XApp)

Fujifilm drastically improved its wireless reliability with the release of its modern connectivity app.

• The App: FUJIFILM XApp (replaces the legacy Camera Remote app).
• How it works: Pair your camera via Bluetooth. In the XApp settings, ensure location synchronization is switched on. A small satellite or globe icon will appear on your camera’s LCD/EVF screen when it is actively receiving a GPS signal.
• The Nuance: Fujifilm cameras update their internal clocks and locations based on the phone. However, aggressive smartphone power-saving settings can sometimes pause background sync, requiring a quick phone wake-up.

6. OM System / Olympus (OI.Share)

Because most Olympus and OM System bodies lack internal GPS hardware, they rely on a smartphone-tethered handshake to map your journey.

• The App: OM Image Share (OI.Share)
• How it works: You can sync the camera and phone via a Bluetooth background connection. Turn on the location logging feature within the OI. Share app to communicate the live coordinates directly to the camera body as you shoot.
• The Nuance: Because it relies entirely on a continuous data stream, keeping the app open and active is crucial for accurate mapping throughout a long day of shooting.
  

7. Leica (Leica FOTOS)

Leica utilizes a clean, minimalist application to push location data to models without internal GPS, such as the Q and M series.

• The App: Leica FOTOS App
• How it works: Pair your Leica camera to your phone using Bluetooth. In the app’s camera management settings, enable the location logging option.
• The Nuance: The app features an “Always-on” background toggle that keeps geotagging active even when the phone is locked. Be aware that keeping this link constantly active will cause a noticeable increase in both phone and camera battery consumption.
  

Pro-Tips for Flawless Mobile Geotagging:

1. Check Battery Optimization: Android and iOS love to put background apps to “sleep.” Disable battery optimization/restrictions for your camera app to prevent geotagging dropouts.
2. Watch the Icons: Always look at your camera’s display before shooting. Most brands display a GPS or satellite icon that flashes while searching and remains solid once it has a lock on your phone’s location.
3. Time Sync is Key: Ensure your camera’s internal clock is synced to your Smartphone. If the timestamps don’t match up, the app may fail to align the GPS coordinates with the correct image.

Unlocking Your Coordinates in Lightroom

Once you have successfully embedded those coordinates into your files using the steps in the post, here is how actually to put that metadata to work using Adobe Lightroom Classic:

• The Map Module: Go to the Map module at the top right. Lightroom will read the EXIF data from your camera app and instantly drop physical pins on a global map showing exactly where you stood for every shot.
• Reverse Geocoding: When you select images in the Map module, Lightroom can automatically look up the coordinates and populate the City, State, and Country fields in your Metadata panel, saving you hours of manual typing.
• Smart Collections: You can create a Smart Collection with rules like “GPS Data > is coordinates” to instantly isolate images that contain location data, making it easy to filter out studio shots from fieldwork.
• The Sync Backup Workaround: If your phone app ever disconnects in the field, you can track your route using a standalone GPX logging app (such as Geotag Photos Pro). In Lightroom’s Map module, click the Tracklog icon (the little wavy line button) and select Load Tracklog. Lightroom will automatically match the timestamps on your photos to your phone’s GPS log and retroactively stamp the files.

Over the past week, I did something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: I turned my camera toward two businesses I actually use — I Canita Cake and Gus’ Barbershop — to show my neighbors what I already know about them.

I didn’t expect the response.

I Canita Cake: 31,768 Views in 5 Days

I took a drone shot of I Canita Cake on Alpharetta Street and posted it with this:

Shoutout to a Roswell gem: I Canita Cake! If you haven’t stopped by I Canita Cake on Alpharetta Street yet, you’re missing out. This woman-owned bakery in the heart of Roswell has been making custom cookies and cakes memorable for over 12 years, and everything from their custom cakes to their famous “Better-than-Oreo” cookie sandwiches is made with real care and creativity.

But the part of the post people really responded to wasn’t the cookies. It was this:

What makes I Canita Cake truly special isn’t just what’s in the display case — it’s what happens with the leftovers. When the day’s baking is done, they call my wife, Dorie Griggs, chaplain for the Roswell Fire Department and Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital, and she delivers those goodies straight into the hands of our Fire, Police, 911 Call Center, and hospital nurses and doctors. It’s a small gesture that means a lot to the people who serve our community around the clock — and it says everything about who I Canita Cake is.

The result: 31,768 views in 5 days, and by the owner’s own account, 4 to 5 new customers walked in the very next day because of the post.

Owner Canita Allen said, “We had three or four people today that said they saw the write-up about us and decided to come give us a try. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

I Canita Cake 1294 Alpharetta St, Roswell, GA (470) 300-9518 icanitacake.com

Gus’ Barbershop: Two Posts, Two Different Stories

The Drone Shot — 8,361 Views

I’ve been a customer at Gus’ Barbershop for more than 20 years — since Gus and his uncle Ray had a shop together just down the street. So when I posted a drone shot of the current location, it came from a lot of history, not just a good haircut day:

Gus’ Barbershop has been a fixture in this community for over 10 years, and it shows. It’s not just a haircut — it’s a tradition. The whole team takes their time with you; nobody’s ever in a hurry, and the customer service is genuinely great every single visit.

That post pulled 8,361 views in 5 days.

The Video — 1,300+ Views Overnight

Then last night I shared something different: a short video of Gus himself, talking about why he does this work.

Meet Gus — Roswell’s own, one haircut at a time. I’ve been going to Gus’ Barbershop for years, and I finally sat down with him to talk about why he does what he does. Turns out it’s not just about the haircut — it’s about making sure everyone in this community, no matter their budget, can walk out feeling good.

That post hit over 1,300 views in the first 16 hours — most of it while everyone was asleep.

Gus’ Barbershop 10697 Alpharetta Hwy, Roswell, GA 30076 (478) 395-8700

Why This Matters (To Me, and Maybe to Your Business)

I’ve spent over 40 years telling stories with a camera — for magazines, for corporations, for community newspapers. What these three posts remind me of is something I learned a long time ago from my mentor, Don Rutledge: you don’t find the story by isolating your subject. You find it by showing people in their relationships and their environment — Canita and the leftovers that go to first responders, Gus and 20 years of customers in that chair.

That’s the story people stop scrolling for.

If your business has a story like that — something true about why you do what you do, and who it’s for — I’d love to help you tell it. A single drone shot or a two-minute conversation on Video might be all it takes.

Stanley flying in a helicopter in 2014 above Blessed Trinity. Photo by Craig Carden

In September 2014, I climbed into a helicopter to get aerial shots of Blessed Trinity High School for a recruiting campaign. The clock was working against me before I even left the ground — by the time the helicopter left the airport, flew to pick me up at the school, and accounted for the return trip, I had about 30 minutes of actual air time to stay under the one-hour billing mark. At $600 an hour, every minute mattered. I was shooting fast, shooting smart, and hoping I nailed the angles I needed on the first pass because there wasn’t time for a second guess.

That was the last time I ever needed a helicopter for aerial photography.

In June 2021, newly certified as a Part 107 drone pilot, I flew over Blessed Trinity again. The contrast could not have been more stark. A helicopter can’t legally fly below 500 feet. A drone can’t fly above 400 feet over most structures. That gap — the airspace between 400 and 500 feet — turned out to be exactly the sweet spot that opened the door to a completely different kind of aerial storytelling.

Today I fly a DJI Air 3. I charge a battery, get about 35 minutes in the air, land, swap in a fresh battery, and go right back up if I need to. No airport pickup. No 30-minute countdown. No $600-an-hour clock running in the back of my mind while I try to compose a shot. I can hover, reposition, wait for better light, and try an angle three different ways — options that simply didn’t exist for me as a working photographer seven years earlier.

Why This Matters for Businesses and Organizations

Aerial perspective used to be a luxury reserved for big budgets. Now it’s a practical tool that almost any business or organization can put to work.

Still images from the air give a business context that ground-level photography can’t. A school can show its full campus — athletic fields, parking, building layout — in a single frame that helps prospective families understand the place at a glance. A contractor or landscaper can document a finished property in a way that shows scale and craftsmanship. A church or nonprofit can capture an outdoor event from above and convey a sense of community and turnout that no ground shot can match. For real estate, construction progress documentation, campus recruiting, and event promotion, a well-composed aerial still is often the single most persuasive image in the whole set.

Video adds movement and pacing to that same advantage. A slow reveal that rises over a building or glides along a property line gives viewers a sense of place and scale in a way that feels cinematic rather than promotional. Organizations use this for recruiting videos, donor and fundraising pieces, real estate listings, and social content that needs to stop the scroll. A ten-second aerial establishing shot can do more to set a tone than thirty seconds of interviews or B-roll.

And practically speaking, the cost structure has flipped. What used to require chartering a helicopter and hoping the weather cooperated on a single expensive day can now be done on a normal shoot day, revisited if the light isn’t right, and repeated as often as the story requires.

Why It Matters for Storytelling

The bigger shift, for me, isn’t really about cost or convenience. It’s about vantage point.

Ground-level photography tells you what something looks like up close — the people, the details, the relationships. Aerial photography tells you where that story sits in the world. It shows scale, context, and connection: how a campus relates to its neighborhood, how a farm relates to the land around it, how a crowd fills a space. My mentor Don Rutledge taught me that good documentary work reveals people through their context and relationships, not by isolating them. An aerial shot is one more way to show that context — pulling back far enough to let the viewer see the whole picture before coming back down to the human details that make it matter.

That’s the real value of having this tool now accessible on a normal shoot budget. It’s not just a new camera angle. It’s a new way to open or close a story — to show someone where they are before you show them who’s there.

Marco Betti, owner of Antica Posta, a Tuscan restaurant and bar in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, plays tennis at Wellbridge’s Athletic Club Northeast in Atlanta, Ga., on September 22, 2009. Betti, who splits his time between the restaurant’s exhibition kitchen and its wine dinners, uses time on the court to stay active outside the kitchen.

Every gym has a wall of equipment. Not every gym has a wall of stories.

Back in the mid-2000s, I had the chance to work with Wellbridge on a project that’s stuck with me ever since — not because of the lighting setups or the shot lists, but because of who I met on the other side of the camera.

Wellbridge wanted to do something different with their marketing. Instead of another glossy mailer full of stock photography — the generic smiling model on a treadmill that nobody actually recognizes — they wanted to show the people who were already walking through their doors. Real members. Real trainers. Real results. The idea was simple: let the club’s own patrons tell the story of what membership had done for their lives, and back it up with photographs that felt honest rather than staged.

That’s where I came in.

Finding the Story in the Session

My approach to this kind of work goes back to something my mentor, the late Don Rutledge, drilled into me early in my career: you don’t find the real story by posing someone in isolation. You find it by staying close to the relationship — between a person and their work, their trainer, their routine, the thing that actually matters to them. So instead of setting up a sterile portrait station in a corner of the club, I spent time in the actual sessions. Step aerobics classes with steppers and hand weights. One-on-one training sessions. The unglamorous, sweaty, in-progress moments that don’t usually make it into a marketing mailer — because those are the moments that are true.

Over the course of the project, I photographed a wide range of Wellbridge members, each with a completely different reason for walking through the door:

• A Georgia Tech professor whose entire career was built on studying human performance — using his own training as a real-world extension of the science he taught in the classroom.
• A prominent Atlanta chef, whose long hours on his feet in a high-heat kitchen made his own health and stamina non-negotiable.
• An independent PR executive, whose days were built around client calls and deadlines, using her time at the club as one of the only hours in her schedule that belonged to her.
• Members connected to organizations like the CDC, along with entrepreneurs, parents, and everyday Atlantans — each with their own version of “why I’m here.”

What struck me, session after session, was how different the reasons were and how similar the result was. A professor who wanted sharper focus for his research. A chef who needed more energy to make it through service. A PR pro who needed one hour a day that wasn’t about anyone else’s deadline but her own. Different lives, same thread: showing up consistently changed how they showed up everywhere else.

Why This Kind of Work Matters

Mailers built around stock photography get glanced at and recycled. Mailers built around a neighbor, a familiar face from the community, someone whose kid goes to the same school — those get read. That’s the power of documentary-style photography in a marketing context: it doesn’t manufacture trust; it reveals trust that’s already there.

For Wellbridge, that meant a library of images they could drop into direct mail campaigns targeted at the neighborhoods surrounding each club — real members, photographed in real sessions, with testimonials that reflected their actual experience rather than a copywriter’s guess at one.

For me, it was a reminder of why I got into this work in the first place. Everybody has a reason they showed up. My job is just to stay close enough, long enough, to see it.

If you run a gym, studio, or wellness business and want to tell your members’ stories the same way — through real sessions, not staged portraits — get in touch to talk about a patron photography project for your own marketing.

In October 2006, Atlanta public relations professional Elizabeth Fairleigh committed to her health, joining Wellbridge to bring the same discipline to her own well-being that she brought to her clients’ success.

At the time, Fairleigh was building a reputation as one of Atlanta’s go-to independent PR professionals. She had spent years as PR director for two Atlanta-based tech companies — one of which completed a successful IPO during her tenure — before striking out on her own to found thE Connection, Inc., a firm specializing in thought leadership and public relations for entrepreneurial, forward-thinking companies. It’s a career that runs on juggling multiple clients, tight deadlines and constant visibility — the kind of demanding pace that makes personal health easy to put last on the list.

For a PR professional whose days were built around client calls, media pitches and staying “on” for everyone else, time at Wellbridge became a space to invest in herself.

That same commitment to consistency and follow-through — the traits that built her PR career — showed up on the gym floor too, and carried back into her work representing clients across the country.

Want a story like this for your gym? Contact Stanley Leary

Long before he was known as one of Atlanta’s pioneering farm-to-table chefs, Michael Tuohy learned an early lesson in his San Francisco kitchens: what you put into your body matters as much as what you put on the plate. Decades later, as the chef/owner of Atlanta’s celebrated Woodfire Grill, Tuohy applied that same philosophy to himself — signing up at Wellbridge Athletic Health Spa to get healthy, stay healthy, and keep pace with the demands of a chef’s life.

Tuohy arrived in Atlanta in 1986 and spent more than two decades building a reputation as one of the city’s most influential chefs, known for bringing a Northern California, farm-to-table sensibility to Southern dining. His restaurant Woodfire Grill, which he owned from 2001 to 2008, drew national acclaim for its locally sourced menus and open-kitchen energy — the kind of demanding, high-heat, high-stakes environment that makes a chef’s own health and stamina non-negotiable.

For a chef, the job doesn’t stop when service ends — long hours on his feet, early mornings at the market, late nights closing the kitchen.

That same discipline — sourcing the right ingredients, building something sustainable, showing up consistently — is what carried over from the kitchen to the gym floor, and back again.

Back in 2011, Georgia Tech psychology professor Dan Fisk walked into a Wellbridge location in Atlanta looking for one thing: to get healthier. What he found was a partnership with trainer Keith Walker that changed how he showed up not just at the gym, but in the rest of his life.

Fisk’s day job is studying human performance — as a professor specializing in engineering psychology and cognitive aging at Georgia Tech, he has spent decades researching how people function at their best as they age. Working with Walker gave him a chance to put that research into practice in his own life.

Under Walker’s guidance, Fisk built a consistent training routine — the kind of structure and accountability that turned a gym membership into a genuine lifestyle change. [Add specific details here: how often he trained, what the sessions focused on, any milestones he hit.]

The results went beyond the weight room. Fisk found that the discipline and energy he built at Wellbridge carried into his work at Georgia Tech — sharper focus, more stamina, and the kind of resilience that comes from showing up for yourself consistently. [Add a specific example: better energy for teaching/research, stress management, sleep, etc.]

That’s the kind of transformation Walker says he loves to see in his clients — not just a change in the mirror, but a change in how they move through their day-to-day lives.

Want a story like this for your gym? Contact Stanley Leary to schedule a client photo shoot and testimonial feature.