Anne Say walked into Logan Lewis's studio already something of a local legend, and by the end of the conversation, it was easy to see why. She's the brand and portrait photographer behind the images on the walls at Nagel's Bagels, the March 2026 cover of Cartersville Living, and a growing archive of small business owners, families, and nonprofits across Bartow County who trust her with the way they're remembered. But before any of that, Anne spent twenty years as a special education teacher and three decades bouncing between Northern New York and Georgia, never once dreaming she'd end up raising chickens on three and a third acres. Logan's conversation with Anne, recorded for the Cartersville Living cover feature, moves from her upstate New York roots through a life-altering cancer diagnosis to the everyday portrait experience she's built her business around, with the kind of candor that makes you feel like you're eavesdropping on two old friends.
From Montague, New York to a Farm in Bartow County
Anne was born seven miles from Montague, New York, a place so cold, she jokes, that the local weathermen used it as a national benchmark alongside Minnesota's Independence for measuring winter misery. "What that grew in me was I hate being cold," she told Logan, explaining why, decades later, hearing Georgians complain about a January cold snap makes her want to say something she keeps to herself in public. Her path from there wound through a New England boarding school ("because I was a little troubled"), a Spanish language and culture degree that took her to Spain, a second bachelor's back in New York, and a move to Southern California, where she met a sailor, got married, and landed in Forsyth County, Georgia, in 1984. What followed was years of bouncing between New York and Georgia before she resettled in the South for good in 2007, tired, she says plainly, "of being cold." She eventually met her husband Terry, and the two built a small homestead in Bartow County complete with a dozen or two chickens and some barn cats.
The Chicken Story She Insists Was Terry's Fault
One of the episode's funniest threads is Anne's chicken origin story, which she tells as though she's still a little shocked by it. When she and Terry moved to their current property, Terry, "a creator" who wanted a project house, started renovating while Anne eyed the land. She proposed bees. Terry said absolutely not. She proposed goats, for milk and cheese. Terry hates goat cheese. So Anne pivoted: "Bees, let's get bees. Let's raise bees." Terry's response: "Hell no, we'll have chickens before we have bees." A friend gave her two dozen fertile eggs, she bought incubators, and twenty-one days later she had eighteen chickens living in her laundry room. "I got a lot of grief from my daughters," Anne laughed, "because they said I was a better chicken mom than I was to them." Three years later, she's still at it, with gentlemanly roosters, a self-described "luxury resort coop," and, at the moment, six dozen eggs on her counter because her hens think it's already summer.
Eight Years Sober, and Saying So Out Loud
Midway through the conversation, Anne turned the mood serious on her own terms. "Four days ago I celebrated my eighth year anniversary of sobriety," she told Logan, pointing out the irony of him having just read a cocktail sponsor spot moments earlier. She was candid that it wasn't a lifestyle choice but an addiction: "What starts out as, I just want to take the edge off the day... some of us have that thing where it becomes an addiction. Some people don't." Her husband Terry, she noted, can take or leave alcohol entirely; she can't, and she's made peace with that difference. Every year on her sobriety anniversary she posts about it publicly, not for accolades, she said, but because "maybe someone will hear there's another way to cope." It's a moment that reframes everything else Anne says about comfort and authenticity in her portrait work; she's built a career on helping people be seen as they are because she's done the work of being honest about who she is.
A Cancer Diagnosis, COVID, and the Birth of Anne Say Photography
Anne had already retired from twenty years of special education teaching and started a faith-based speaking and coaching business when everything shifted again. In August 2019, Terry was diagnosed with bladder cancer, and he asked her to pause her growing virtual coaching business just to be present. "He's not high maintenance," she said, so with unexpected time on her hands, she picked up her camera. Then came a gorgeous, mid-70s spring in early 2020 and the isolation of COVID lockdowns. Friends started asking her to photograph them, their kids, their dogs. "By June, Anne Say Photography was born," she said, "and I never did pick up the coaching again." She niched into brand and business photography at a moment, in 2020, when almost nobody else in Cobb County was doing it, and built what she calls her everyday portrait experience: sessions built around music, movement, and helping people find the version of themselves they want captured, whether that's a cowgirl leaning into toughness or a graduating actress needing headshots. "I always say in my portrait experience," she told Logan, "if we end up on the floor, it's a good day."
Nagel's Bagels, Cowgirls of Cartersville, and Marketing Without the Hard Sell
Anne's growth in Cartersville has been almost entirely relationship-driven, not pitched. She told the story of photographing "the birthing of a bagel" at Nagel's Bagels after a casual conversation with owner Kelly about a coffee table book idea turned into two full photo sessions, the images now lining the shop's walls and appearing in the business's print and online marketing. She described shooting Caitlin's maternity photos in the Etowah River years before Caitlin ever became the editor commissioning her for Cartersville Living covers, and the whirlwind of the Cowgirls of Cartersville shoot: eighteen women from the Booth Museum's circle-level donors, photographed at Montana's Paws Up Ranch after a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call, Anne balanced on an eight-foot ladder to nail the cover shot on a circular staircase Leslie McMillan had texted her a photo of days earlier. Through it all, Anne's philosophy stayed consistent: "I don't believe in self-promotion from the sense of, buy my thing, buy my service, do this... it's more just showing what I can do." Logan, newly full-time in his own business, found the parallel immediately, noting that his own client relationships have come the same way, over coffee, without an agenda.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Anne Say's story is proof that a second act, or a third, can be built on honesty, community, and a genuine love of people. From chicken coops in Bartow County to the cover of Cartersville Living, her path is anything but a straight line, and that's exactly what makes it worth hearing in full. Catch the entire conversation with Anne Say on Your Morning Drive, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Listen to Episode #470
Catch the full conversation with Anne Say on Your Morning Drive, wherever you listen.
