The Camouflaged Optimist

Columnist and Photographer Bunny Ware Connects Savannah

For Bunny Ware (’92), life is best off-script.

She’ll tell you she can’t write, but her social column, “Bunny in the City,” has been a beloved entertainment fixture in Savannah for the last 12 years. Ware never studied photography, but is arguably the most invited event photographer in town, while decked in camouflage, flip-flops and a high-flying ponytail, even for some of the city’s most prominent affairs.

Her superpower?

Ware is an optimist. A lifter, a doer, a connector. Belying her unabashed exuberance, her seemingly endless stream of energy, Ware’s greatest fulfillment comes from connecting people, and she is widely appreciated for it.

“I’m a connector because I care enough to see what someone needs,” said Ware. “I can quickly match a person to who they need to know, that will benefit them most, without expecting anything in return. When you don’t have anything to gain from it, it’s a genuine connection. I think that’s why Savannah has put up with me acting, dressing or saying the things that I do because they recognize my intent is genuine.

“I have a gift that I can help other people with.”

That gift flourished on Georgia Southern University’s Statesboro Campus beginning in the 1980s. From Wadley, Georgia, Ware and most of her friends attended Georgia Southern, about an hour away from home.

Ware’s studies didn’t come with ease. She first signed on as a history major, but realized she didn’t want to teach and switched to psychology. However, a tendency to flip numbers in a required statistics class caused her to bump her minor in communications up to a major.

At that time, she was also dealing with personal issues, and communication studies professors Beverly Graham, Ph.D., and Chris Geyerman, Ph.D., allowed her to do independent study for a semester. Once back in classrooms, she was forever changed by the husband-and-wife duo who continue to teach at Georgia Southern today.

“They had such a huge impact on how I live my life,” said Ware. “I gained learning tools that I could live my life by. I learned things like northerners stare longer than southerners, or how southerners get closer to you. How they blink more. Or the placement of things on a desk, or their body language. The things that you can learn to help read people do really well with how fast I can work a room, how well I did in sales and how well I pose people with photography.

“My classes at Southern prepped me to be very successful being in front of people. I was very prepared for the jobs that came my way.”

After graduation, Ware briefly worked in hospitality in Atlanta before accepting a position at AAMCO Transmissions in Statesboro, a dream job for the self-proclaimed car fanatic who grew up in a town of 2,000 people where “anything that has a wheel in it — we learned to drive.”

Later, a relationship pulled her to Savannah where she served as a travel sales rep for automotive company LKQ, a role that allowed her to blend her love of cars with her communications prowess and understanding of people. During that time she was introduced to master photographer Dan Leger, now a tour guide in the Savannah historic district. Ware was drawn to the social aspect of photography and volunteered to work with Leger, an ex-military officer who taught her how to pose people and shoot angles quickly, in her free time.

The camera soon became Ware’s gateway to adventure, as she freelanced traveling cross-country to shoot ribbon-cuttings for Virginia College. For seven years, Ware experienced the U.S. through its backroads, from the east coast to west, along the Pacific coastline and through Alaska. Later, she traveled to Ireland, Iceland and beyond, a long-lens camera always in hand.

In 2003, LKQ cut its East Coast position and Ware’s thriving career skidded to a halt. At the top of her field, “I’m either going to have to move or change professions,” she recalled.

Soon after, on a visit to the former New South Café, she suggested to the owner that he needed music, paintings on the walls, and to wear a chef’s uniform. Several visits — and rounds of advice — later, he asked Ware to work for him.

“I told him, ‘I don’t know anything about your world, but I know how to promote you in mine,’” said Ware.

The networking began. Within a year, the restaurant was thriving and eventually housed a Georgia Restaurant Association Award. Ware photographed all of the restaurant’s events and posted them online to Savannah Master Calendar, a media marketing website that brought small businesses and nonprofits together with the help of a free master community calendar.

While attending a culinary event, Liberty Powers, a rep from Savannah Morning News asked Ware for permission to share her photos on the news site. For the next 10 years, Ware contributed nearly 2,000 galleries to the newspaper with an expansive portfolio that grew to include Savannah’s citizens across a variety of venues.

A year into her new gig, the paper posted an ad for a social columnist position. Ware pursued the editor, Mona Lisa Castle, relentlessly for four months.

“I’m already taking photos for you,” Ware told her. “I have a degree in communications. I didn’t tell her that I made a ‘C’ in my writing class because I’m so awful at it, but I understood how to write well enough.”

The editor finally gave Ware a chance, and asked her to cover an event with 1,200 words and 20 photos. After a 10-hour stretch of crafting something that resembled a column, Ware turned the piece in.

“Bunny in the City,” a social column that only showcases the best of Savannah, finally had a home. Castle coached Ware through the process for a year.

“She said, ‘Bunny, you’re never going to be a great writer.’ She’s right. I never got better. But I’m smart enough to know that, and talented when it comes to getting people to tell me their stories.”

In 2021, Ware was voted “Savannah’s Best Local Newspaper Columnist” by the readers of Connect Savannah, who also featured her as Savannah’s “Best Connector.”

This year, her weekly column moved to Connect Savannah, where she will continue to provide weekly entertainment news, and she is the host of a new weekly segment, “Where’s Bunny Ware?” on WSAV-TV. Especially close to her heart is an ongoing partnership with Step One Automotive Group, which hosts significant veteran outreach, while she zips around to city happenings in a sponsored Jeep Gladiator, photographing and connecting Savannah, one event at a time.

“I think I’ve paved my own way and I’ve done it exactly the way I wanted to,” said Ware. “I get to pick who I work with and I only work with people who do good deeds. How blessed am I?”

Ware continues to go off-grid as much as possible. Next stop, Austria and Romania. As for the 40,000 travel images stored on her iPhone, and the many stories that accompany them, “Bunny’s Backroads” may land on bookshelves one day.

As always, Ware remains loyal to Georgia Southern, recognizing the education and support she received.

“I know that my background, from psychology to the theories of communication that seeped into my consciousness, worked,” she said. “For some people, it’s just something that they learn and they forget. Mine was a life application. Some people are lucky enough to have an education that they benefit from. I’m one of those people. It was a gift. It’s still giving.” 

— Melanie Bowden Simón