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AUTHENTIC STORY CO.

Erin McGrady + Caroline Whatley
  • About
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Writing
  • Drone
  • Media + Press
  • Connect
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Short films, Film fests, YouTube, and Reels

In 2024 we received the No Man’s Land Film Festival’s Genderqueer Filmmaker Grant which helped us bring Full Spectrum - A Queer Outdoorsy Film About Autism, to life. It had its World Premier in Denver in 2025 as well as travel around via the NMLFF World Tour. During the No Man’s Land Flagship Festival Erin received the Fem-Wow Award for favorite All-Woman production / Director. Full Spectrum was also selected for the NMLFF World Tour and was recently selected for the Muskoka Film Festival in Ontario, Canada.

We’ve been hired by numerous outdoor brands to breathe life into projects.

Recent video clients include Outside, Merrell, Coleman, Orvis, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Stio, and ENO Hammocks.

 

Authentic Asheville’s 2024 Cinematography Reel

Marathon Motivation by Authentic Asheville

 
On location at JOLO Winery and Vineyards in Pilot Mountain, NC.

On location at JOLO Winery and Vineyards in Pilot Mountain, NC.

Visit NC's Wine Your Way Press Trip

Erin McGrady October 7, 2021

We recently spent five days in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina on assignment for Visit NC. The goal of the project was for us to capture the spirit of the wine industry in our home state. Our itinerary was jam-packed but we loved every single minute of it. We toured close to 25 different locations, met with various wine-makers and owners, tasted what they were making, and even had a couple of side adventures such as a waterfall hike to Carter Falls and a step back in time visiting Old Salem.

Tags wine, press trip, Visit NC
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Food Photography + Van Life

Erin McGrady March 3, 2021

We love food and we love photography so naturally, we love combining the two any chance we get. ROVA Magazine, which dubs itself as The Magazine for Epic Road Trips, liked an idea we had for a story that involved finding and making local seafood on the Delmarva coast. (Delmarva is a mashup of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.) Our story was published in the April/May 2019 issue of the magazine. We have contributed four articles for them in the last two years.

Tags food photography, food styling
Authentic Asheville’s content creation for Founders Brewing and Men’s Journal.

Authentic Asheville’s content creation for Founders Brewing and Men’s Journal.

Founder's Brewing and Men's Journal

Erin McGrady March 2, 2021

We recently were asked to create some lifestyle food photography for an online campaign that Founder’s Brewing was doing with Men’s Journal. The idea was to use a recipe for making queso outdoors that featured their new line of hard seltzers, Mas Agave. Other than that, we had the green light to get creative. Here’s a few images of what we came up with!

Product and food styling by Caroline Whatley.
Photography by Erin McGrady

Tags food photography, food styling
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Content Creation for Made By Google

Erin McGrady February 8, 2021

We had a lot of fun creating content for a recent campaign highlighting the Google Lens feature on the Google Pixel phone. The idea was to take the phone out into the wild and capture some imagery that showed us using one of our favorite features. We decided upon the Lens feature because we’ve found it to be helpful when identifying various plants on our walks - in other words, it was a natural extension of our daily lives and made for some pretty cool imagery, too. We shared the photo on @e.mcgrady’s Instagram feed and it was also highlighted on Made By Goog'le’s Feed as well.

Tags content creation, product photography
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