Tours in Hinesville

Savvy Savannah Tours founders Rebecca King and Cyndie Parmerter pinpointed a problem with local tours: guests’ lack of connection to the content. Determined to bridge the gap between guides’ narratives and visitors’ imaginations without connecting their brains via electrodes, they designed a new brand of walking tour that sometimes incorporates interactive technology. The Scenes of Savannah Past guides are outfitted with iPads that display retro pictures of Savannah as they pass the locales in modern day. But other tours, such as the culinary Eat it and Like it or beer-tasting Savannah Suds, let the southern flavor of the city speak for itself.

As charmingly anachronistic as trolleys may be, they move too fast for Pablo Aguilar, one of Capturing Savannah’s co-founders. So to capture the colors, lines, and ornamentation of Savannah’s 19th-century architectural wonders, he prefers to walk, leading groups on tours that blend the historical entertainment of a city tour with the skill set of a photography safari.

While ducking into 200-year-old nooks along Factors Walk, a onetime commerce area, Pablo and co-founder Brittany Nelson teach aspiring shutterbugs to take photos with “a clear purpose behind the shot.” The pair coach tour members to find aesthetically pleasing angles and to thoughtfully compose their images before shooting. Along with technique, they try to instill “a sense of nostalgia” in each photographer. “It’s all about the feeling,” Pablo says, “expressing the same feeling they felt [when they took] the photograph.”

Pablo and Britt previously lived in New York, Chicago, Austin, New England, and the Middle East, but both have fallen for the vibrancy and artistry Savannah draws from its history. For a glimpse of the city as seen through a lens at foot-speed, Capturing Savannah offers a gallery of Pablo and Britt’s tour photos.