Zack Arias is an editorial and commercial photographer based in Atlanta, GA. He has been working in the music industry for the past seven years, and is now branching into more editorial work and advertising.
His greatest talents are the ability to mix with any class of people and to get nervous subjects to relax in front of my camera. Zack is married to the lovely and talented musician Meghan Arias (formerly Meghan Coffee) and has four boys ranging from age 12 to 2.
Scott Belsky has committed his professional life to help organize the creative world. Scott is the co-founder and CEO of Behance, a company on a mission to organize and empower the creative world. In 2010, he was included in Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People in Business." Scott is the author of the international bestselling book Making Ideas Happen.
Jen Bekman is a gallerist, entrepreneur and writer. Her eponymous gallery has been on Spring Street in NYC since 2003. She is also the founder of Hey, Hot Shot!, the internationally acclaimed photography competition. Her most well known venture is the pioneering website 20x200, an ecommerce business that offers limited-edition fine art prints at affordable prices; Jen is the site's curator and its CEO. A builder and denizen of online communities since before the advent of the World Wide Web, Jen is currently most active on Twitter (@jenbee) and Tumblr (at jenbee.tumblr.com).
Leila Boujnane = large scale image search using image recognition. She leads the team who brought the world reverse image search in the form of TinEye.
Leila is also a novice ultra runner and a terrible photographer. You can find her heading Idée Inc and TinEye and blogging at Hyperbio.
Lucas Allen Buick, 29, is a graphic designer turned entrepreneur. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, Lucas spent time after college working as an editorial art director at various publications. However, he quickly realized he wanted to bring his own artistic vision to the world. In 2006, he founded Synthetic Corp. with his best friend, Ryan Dorshorst, which focused mostly on design, brand and web consulting.
In 2009, Synthetic Corp.'s focus shifted to mobile software. That pivot, coupled with Lucas' passion for shooting on his Polaroid SX-70, resulted in the birth of Hipstamatic on the whiteboards of Synthetic's 400 square foot Minnesota office. Soon thereafter, Lucas headed west to open Synthetic's headquarters in a city at the intersection of art, design and technology: San Francisco, CA.
Today, Lucas remains dedicated to helping people beautifully capture their lives. He is also committed to making Synthetic a driving force for creativity, based on his belief that art and visual storytelling can change the world.
David Burnett was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. He began taking pictures on the yearbook at Olympus High School and while in high school, began freelancing – covering sports events and selling pictures to the S L Tribune. He launched his magazine career in 1967 as an intern at Time Magazine while earning a degree in political science at Colorado College. He went to Vietnam as a freelance photographer in 1970 working for Time and LIFE, and later joined Gamma (the French agency) before co-founding Contact Press Images in 1976. He has worked with all the Time Inc. magazines, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and National Geographic, in a career that has spanned nearly 45 years. He has visited more than eighty countries, and covered stories as diverse as the French and American Presidential elections from 1972 to the present; the famine in Sahel in 1974 and in Ethiopia in 1984; the Iranian revolution following Ayatollah Khomeini's return to Tehran in 1979, and the Summer Olympics from 1984 to 2012, and the Salt Lake Games of 2002. He has twice chaired the World Press Photo jury in Amsterdam, and was notified he is this years LUCIE Award winner for Photojournalism.
Chris Chabot leads the Google+ Developer Relations team at Google, and is passionate about social media, sociology, innovative technologies, traveling and photography - four things that combine surprisingly well making him a highly visible member in both the developer and photography communities on Google+.
You can find his work at http://profiles.google.com/chabotc
Eric Cheng is Director of Photography at Lytro, where he is responsible for bridging the gap between light field photography and the general public. In addition to his role at Lytro, Eric is an award-winning professional underwater photographer and publisher of Wetpixel.com, a popular online community site for underwater image makers. Eric frequently lectures about photography and ocean conservation, and also leads photography expeditions to remote destinations around the world. In his spare time, he plays the cello and eats ice cream. Eric holds a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Kevin Connor is the president and co-founder of Fourandsix Technologies Inc., a new company developing solutions to determine the authenticity of photos. Kevin spent more than 15 years at Adobe guiding product management for Adobe Photoshop and related products since before the widespread adoption of digital cameras, and he was responsible for extending Adobe's digital imaging lineup with successful products like Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. In that time, he saw how the democratization of powerful creative tools could also have important social and legal consequences, as a small segment of users apply those tools towards deception and ultimately undermine trust in visual imagery. Now, he's teamed with Dr. Hany Farid--the leading researcher in image forensics--and they're developing products to analyze photos and separate the real from the fabricated.
Bill Cramer is founder and CEO of Wonderful Machine, a curated directory of high-quality photographers serving commercial and editorial clients worldwide. He is also an accomplished photographer in his own right, specializing in environmental portraiture for a wide range of corporate, editorial and advertising clients including Forbes, BBDO, Comcast and Accenture.
Graduating from Penn State in 1985, Bill began his career as a photojournalist, stringing for the Associated Press and The New York Times. He assisted many prominent photographers, including a year with fashion photographer Steven Meisel. Over time, his interests grew to include portraiture, where he now concentrates his efforts. He has received a number of industry awards, and has been included in Communication Arts Photography Annual three times.
In 2007, seeing an opportunity to build a better mouse trap, Bill created Wonderful Machine as a "source book on steroids." In addition to providing clients with an eclectic selection of photographers from around the world, Wonderful Machine aggressively promotes those photographers using email campaigns, print mailers, web ads, social media, publicity, phone calls, and portfolio events.
Wonderful Machine also offers photographers a host of consulting services including help with estimates, production, web design, photo editing and more. Their staff members frequently participate in industry events and contribute a popular monthly column on Pricing & Negotiating for aphotoeditor.com. Wonderful Machine currently works with over 600 photographers in 50 countries around the world.
Barbara Davidson has been a staff photographer for The Los Angeles Times since 2007. Prior to LA, she worked at The Dallas Morning News, The Washington Times, and The Record in Ontario, Canada.
Davidson won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography and a National Emmy for her Multi-Media documentary of innocent victims trapped in the crossfire of Los Angeles's deadly gang violence. She also won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography with seven fellow staff members for their Hurricane Katrina coverage. That same year, the Pictures of The Year International Competition (POYI) named Davidson 'Newspaper Photographer of The Year'. In 2010 Davidson was the recipient of The National Press Photographers Associations Cliff Edom's "New America Award" for her " Frozen Land, Forgotten People" Navajo Nation essay. In 2011 she received The Community Awareness Award, by POYi, for her coverage of victims of gang violence in Los Angeles County. Davidson was awarded the Visa d'Or Daily Press award in 2009, and had an exhibition at the Visa Pour l'image festival in Perpignan, France this year.
Ms. Davidson, both an Irish and Canadian citizen, was born and raised in Montreal, Canada, and graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography and Film Studies.
José de Cabo is one of the three founders of Olapic the NYC startup created to put user generated photos where they really belong. The Olapic founding team met at Columbia Business School where they started building the technology that helps eCommerce, Brands and media Companies embrace a more visual communication with their users based on Intagram, Twitter and Facebook photos.
Current customers include: Mashable, Guess, Free People, NYDailyNews, Journal Register, Conde Nast, Nikon, Pepsi, FC Barcelona among other.
For the past 10 years Amy Dresser has been based in Los Angeles, amassing an array of commercial and editorial work as a photo retoucher and illustrator. She is celebrated for her portrait work and more specifically, her treatment of skin.
Amy graduated from Hofstra in 1998 with a degree in Fine Arts. She specialized in figurative and portrait painting and served as an illustrator for the campus humor magazine. In 1999 she received her Post-Baccalaureate in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Some of her projects include: album artwork for Britney Spears and Weird Al; advertising campaigns for Pepsi and Target; and celebrity portraiture of Tom Cruise, Gwen Stefani, Snoop Dogg, and Katy Perry.
Sara Friedlander was newly named Vice President and Head of the Afternoon Sale in the Post-War & Contemporary department at Christie's. With the company for over six years, Sara spent her first four in the warehouse cataloguing works of art and the next two seasons as the head of the First Open Sale geared toward younger collectors, which, under her direction, became the highest grossing mid-season sale in its category at Christie's. Sara spends most of her time on planes, trains and automobiles travelling the world to secure works of art for sale. She is also a charity auctioneer.
Sara graduated from Brandeis University with a BA in Art History, and minored in Creative Writing and Women's Studies. She went on to complete her Master's degree in Fine and Decorative Arts at the Sotheby's Institute in London where she wrote her dissertation on late 19th and early 20th century American and British periodical illustration.
Artinfo recently named Sara in the "30-and-Under Crowd: The Art World's Most Influential Young Figures."
Since launching at DEMO in 2006, Eileen has led Blurb from a startup to a high-growth company, reaching profitability in two and a half years of product availability. With over 2 million registered users, nearly 1 million unique book titles, and a global footprint that extends to more than 70 countries, Blurb continues to experience high growth even amidst challenging economic times. At it's peak volume in 2009, Blurb produced more book titles in 2 minutes than a mid-sized publisher would produce in a year.
Eileen's extraordinary track record was recently recognized in Silicon Valley; she won Best CEO in the under $100MM revenue category in the Tech Innovations Awards (sponsored by the San Francisco Business Times) last year and was a semi-finalist in the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in 2011. The company was also named the fastest growing media company in the Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies list and was named the 47th fastest growing private company in the United States in 2010. Eileen is a frequent speaker at national and international events such as the EG Conference, MediaBistro, O'Reilly's Tools for Publishing and has been featured on television programs ranging from the BBC to network television in the US.
"Now and then you hear a story that restores your faith in the internet, both as a global sharing tool that can be used as a force for good and as a means by which a moment of serendipity and a good idea can bring fame and fortune to an individual," said the UK Huffington Post.
That individual is Taylor Jones. As the 23-year-old founder of the worldwide phenomenon dearphotograph.com, he is responsible for a site that has, in just over a year, become a conduit for the memories and emotions of millions of people. CBS named Dear Photograph the #1 website in 2011, and TIME Magazine included it as their #7 pick of the top 50 websites favorites. Taylor has recently published with HarperCollins, Dear Photograph the book, with never-before-seen photos.
Taylor admits he is a "consummate idea guy" who has always been active in the digital world. His other passions? Music, being Canadian, camping, cottaging, travelling and hockey. A graduate of Conestoga College's advertising program, Taylor currently resides in Kitchener, Ontario.
Author and photographer Joe McNally has worked in 60 countries shooting stories and covers for many of the major magazines of the world. At various times in his career he's been a contract photographer for Sports Illustrated, a staff photographer at LIFE, and currently, an ongoing 25-year contributor to the National Geographic.
He shot the first all digital coverage in the history of the Nat Geo. Titled, "The Future of Flying", the coverage was deemed significant enough to be acquired for preservation by the Library of Congress. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he also created, "Faces of Ground Zero," using the world's only life sized Polaroid camera. As a traveling exhibit, and a book, it helped raise approximately $2 million dollars for the 9/11 relief efforts. Joe has penned several best selling photo books, photographed the noteworthy, and won many photo honors and prizes. He continues to use too many flashes, and writes a humorous, heartfelt blog about being a shooter. But after all these years, the best thing about his life is that he still has his eye in a camera, and he's married to the wonderful Annie Cahill.
Gary Morgan, CEO of Splash News, began his career as a local newspaper journalist in Southampton, a south coast beach town in the U.K. Later, Morgan took a position with the U.K. national newspapers on Fleet Street. After 18 months, he left to travel the world for a year and ended up in Los Angeles where he co-founded Splash News with Kevin Smith in 1992.
Splash started as a celebrity newswire for the U.K. and over the last 20 years has become the leading provider of breaking entertainment imagery and video content reaching 10,000 customers in 65 countries. The company has also led the way in distribution, technology and new media product. Splash distributes 5,000 images a day to its global customer base and has over 3,000 photographers worldwide. Splash was acquired by Corbis in 2011.
Simon Moss is the CEO and Founder of ImageBrief, the fast growing photography marketplace for advertising agencies and publishers. Simon has over 15 years experience in fast growth, international businesses including 9 years in the commerical photography industry. Previously Simon was the international sales and marketing manager for two software startups including an AIIA and Deloitte's Fast 50-awarded company.
Avi is an artist, author and serial entrepreneur based in NYC with a background in business, law, design and programming. His personal mission is to help everyone be more creative. MIT's Technology Review named him one of the "Top 35 innovators under 35" (2010). Avi's proudest accomplishments include his 3 awesome children and the understanding startup wife who helps keep the trains running on time at home.
Michael Muller has been taking photographs and documenting pop culture for over 25 years. From the birth of snowboarding in the 80's, to outlaw motorcycle clubs, to some of the biggest movie posters of all time, Michael has used his "hyper realistic" style to document and capture the experience and bring it to people in his own unique way. His celebrated and award winning commercial work has included clients such as Kodak, Nike, Reebok,Speedo,Range Rover,Coke, and intel to name just a few. Michael just spent time up at Facebook's campus cansulting and helping them design their new camera AP and is sponsored by phase one camera systems where he regularly helps with R&D. He just recieved his patent on his underwater strobe system that is the most powerful waterproof lighting system in the World. He started Kids Clicking Kids the charity he formed with the Art of Elysium 5 years ago that brings photography to children in hospitals and teaches them the art form. Michaels true passion is animals and photographing them in their natural environment only with lighting used in Hollywood. Michael has worked and collaborated with UNESCO, The UNITED NATIONS, and The Charles Darwin foundation to try and help bring awareness to the state of our planet. His show Shark Shoot Fiji which he produced with partner Joaquin Pheonix just aired on The Travel Channel which documented him and his team in action photographing some of these animals. His next expedition will be capturing breaching great white sharks off the coast of south Africa and then back to land and into safari where he will document all of these animals with lights.
As Senior Vice President of Business Development at Getty Images, Craig Peters is responsible for the global development and management of strategic partnerships, evaluating and executing investments and acquisitions and pursuing new business opportunities, products and services.
Craig joined Getty Images in 2007 as Vice President of Footage, Music and Multimedia following the acquisition of WireImage, where he served as Senior Vice President of New Media and Strategic Development.
Prior to joining WireImage, Craig served key roles in media and technology including business development for FOX Sports Interactive, new media strategy and business development for the PGA TOUR, business development at Homestead.com (acquired by Intuit) and positions with A. T. Kearney and Eastman Kodak Company. In 2005 while at the PGA TOUR, Craig was awarded an Emmy by the National Television Academy for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Enhancement of Original Television Content.
Craig holds an MBA from The Wharton School of Business and a BS in Finance from The Ohio State University.
PERSONAL DATA: Born in 1955 in Silverton, Oregon. Married with two children.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Silverton Union High School, Silverton, Oregon, in 1973; received a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Oregon State University in 1978 and a Doctorate in Chemical Engineering from the University of Arizona in 1983.
EXPERIENCE: Staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico from 1984 to 1996. Projects included reduced gravity fluid flow and materials processing experiments onboard the NASA KC-135 airplane, atmospheric spectroscopy on noctilucent clouds seeded from sounding rockets, fumarole gas sampling from volcanoes and problems in detonation physics. He was a member of the Synthesis Group, slated with assembling the technology to return to the moon and explore Mars (1990) and the Space Station Freedom Redesign Team (1993).
NASA EXPERIENCE: Selected by NASA in April 1996, Dr. Pettit reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996. A veteran of three spaceflights, Dr. Pettit has logged more than 370 days in space and over 13 EVA (spacewalk) hours. He lived aboard the International Space Station for 5-1/2 months during Expedition 6, was a member of the STS-126 crew, and again lived aboard the station for 6-1/2 months as part of the Expedition 30/31 crew.
SPACEFLIGHT EXPERIENCE: Expedition 6 (November 23, 2002 to May 3, 2003). Dr. Pettit completed his first spaceflight as NASA International Space Station Science Officer aboard the station, logging more than 161 days in space, including over 13 EVA hours. During their 5-1/2 months aboard the ISS, the crew worked with numerous U.S. and Russian science experiments. Dr. Pettit and Mission Commander Ken Bowersox performed two EVAs to continue the external outfitting of the orbital outpost. The Expedition 6 crew launched on STS-113 Space Shuttle Endeavour and returned to Earth on Soyuz TMA-1.
STS-126 Endeavour (November 14 to November 30, 2008) launched at night from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and returned to land at Edwards Air Force Base, California. It was NASA's 4th shuttle flight in 2008 and the 27th shuttle/station assembly mission. Highlights of the almost 16-day mission included expanding the living quarters of the International Space Station to eventually house six-member crews by delivering a new bathroom, kitchenette, two bedrooms, an exercise machine and a water recycling system. During the mission, Dr. Pettit operated the robotic arm for a total of four EVAs performed by three members of the crew. STS-126 also delivered a new resident to the station, replacing Greg Chamitoff, Expedition 17/18, with Sandy Magnus, Expedition 18. STS-126 returned to Earth after completing 250 orbits in more than 6 million miles.
Expedition 30/31 (December 21, 2011 to July 1, 2012) launched to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-03M craft from Kazakhstan. NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit, Russian Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands docked to the Rassvet module of the station on December 23, 2011 restoring the station's crew complement to six. They continued scientific research and marked a new era of commercial resupply services from the United States by greeting the first SpaceX Dragon spaceship, which launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Following a series of tests of its maneuverability and abort systems, the capsule was grappled and berthed to the space station by the crew members of Expedition 31. Dr. Petit landed in Kazakhstan after 193 days in space orbiting the Earth 3,088 times and traveling more than 76 million miles.
Dr. Pettit has spent a total of 370 days in space in three flights.
Evan Ratliff is the co-founder and editor of Atavist, a media and software company that produces a digital storytelling platform and an award-winning magazine and e-singles publishing arm, The Atavist. His writing also appears in The New Yorker, National Geographic, and Wired, where he is a contributing editor.
Graduated as an Electrical Engineer in 1979 and went to work for Hewlett Packard as a technical marketing engineer at their Loveland, Colorado facility. Held a number of positions in HP, and later Agilent, in various locations around the world all related to the creation and marketing of technology products. He joined Vision Reseach in 2006 where he has focused on building the Phantom camera brand and bringing award-winning digital high-speed cameras to market.
Robert Seale is a Houston photographer specializing in editorial, corporate, and advertising portraiture.
He began his career as a photojournalist, where he worked as a staffer at several major newspapers. He eventually landed at the Sporting News, where he spent 11 years shooting Super Bowls and World Series games as well as cover portraits for the popular magazine. His love of portrait work eventually led him to a Houston-based freelance career specializing in shooting people for magazines, prestigious design firms, corporations, and advertising agencies.
Seale is known for his lighting skills and his creative ability to coax multiple concepts from a single location with very limited time. He's equally adept photographing celebrity athletes, busy CEO's, and normal folks in any environment with any level of production necessary to tell their story.
As a sought after speaker in the photographic industry, Seale has taught lighting technique and portraiture at a variety of photography workshops in the US and Canada.
He has won awards from The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, was a finalist for Life Magazine's Eissie Award, and has been featured in the Best of ASMP.
His editorial credits include Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, Men's Health, SLAM, Businessweek, Forbes, Barron's, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Air & Space, The New York Times Magazine, and over 200 covers of The Sporting News. As an annual report and advertising photographer, Robert has worked on projects for ExxonMobil, Tellabs, Schlumberger, BP, Marathon, XTO Energy, Reebok, and Under Armour.
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Brian Smith is the luckiest guy on the planet. He's told Bill Gates what to do for an entire hour, appeared on The X Factor, dined with the President and 3,000 of their closest friends, had an exhibit at the Library of Congress and cupcakes with Anne Hathaway, gotten drunk with George Clooney and married the most beautiful woman he ever laid eyes on…
For the past 30 years, his iconic portraits of famous celebrities, athletes and executives have been used in advertising, by corporations and have graced the covers and pages of hundreds of magazines including Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine, Time, Forbes, New York Times Magazine, Elle and British GQ. His first magazine photograph appeared in LIFE Magazine when Smith was a 20-year-old student at the University of Missouri. Five years later, Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for his photographs of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. He was again a finalist for the Pulitzer for his photographs of Haiti in Turmoil. His photograph of Greg Louganis hitting his head on the diving board at the Seoul Olympics won first place in both World Press Photo and the Pictures of the Year competition.
His book 'Art & Soul: Stars Unite to Celebrate and Support the Arts' photographed in partnership with The Creative Coalition and Sony, pairs Smith's portraits of celebrities from film, television, stage and music with their personal messages about the importance of funding the arts. His second book 'Secrets of Great Portrait Photography: Photographs of the Famous and Infamous' will be published this fall by New Riders.
Alan Taylor created the successful news photo blog "The Big Picture" for The Boston Globe in 2008. He ran the site for two years before joining The Atlantic to start "In Focus," another photojournalism blog, in January of 2011. Formerly a web developer, Taylor combined his love of storytelling and photography with the web skills he'd developed to create a new platform for visual storytelling.
Cory West is an engineering manager on the photos team at Facebook. He is passionate about creative technology and putting creative tools in the hands of artists. He has worked on audio, video, photo, and design products at Facebook, Adobe, Avid, Digidesign, and Microsoft, and he lives in a clutter of computers, cameras, synthesizers, and assorted other gadgets in San Francisco, CA. He received his undergraduate degree in computer science from Rice University in 1994, and he has idolized Laurie Anderson since he first listened to Big Science in 1984 at the impressionable age of 12 years old.
Peter lives in Brooklyn, hails from the great state of Texas, and photographs subjects all over the world.
Peter shoots lots of rock stars. He gets along with them because he's a nice guy and not intimidating. This is confusing to Peter because he thinks he totally looks like a rock star.
He has photographed covers featuring Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, LeBron James, Stephen Colbert, and Iggy Pop, among others. He is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, The New York Times Magazine and has shot campaigns for RayBan, Pepsi, Tylenol and Gillette.
