CONFERENCE VENUE

CONFERENCE HOTEL

NYC based, Syracuse NY raised, self taught award winning photographer; Mel D Cole is one of the world’s most accomplished and celebrated photographers with a career spanning 20 years. Mel specializes in music; specifically hip hop, sports, nightlife, travel, and street documentary, brand and most recently photojournalism.

Two Mann Studios is based in the Rocky Mountains of Canmore, Alberta. But that doesn't stop Erika and Lanny from documenting humans all over the globe! The pair has photographed weddings on every continent except Antarctica (but they would love to shoot there). Yeah, they’ve won acclaimed photography awards. But, what matters is that they deliver the best damn experience known to wedding photography. Period. Your photos will be out of this world. And so will your photography education experience. Erika and Lanny believe in the power of photography. But, even more so, they believe that photography is a vehicle to touch individual lives (not through the actual photo, but through our actions). They believe in the power community. Two Mann has a community of 23,000+ students from around the world that have learned with them and from them. As leaders in the world of photography, Erika and Lanny feel a great responsibility to nurture more leaders. Leaders who spread kindness, generosity, betterment, and world-class photography around the world.

Kirsten is a documentary family photographer based in Denver, Colorado. However her work takes her all over the world, from New Zealand to Dubai, Brazil to Canada, Italy to Hawaii. Although she has been shooting for more than 20 years, it was teaching on Creative Live that really brought her approach to documentary family photography to the forefront as a desirable alternative to the traditional family portrait.

Dr. Tomayia Colvin, EDD is a nationally published high school senior portrait photographer, best-selling children’s book author, classroom teacher, and photography educator in Houston, Texas.
And she is on a mission to celebrate diversity in photography.  She works with conferences & workshop organizers to bridge the color division and to include voices that are missing from the photography industry.

While on this mission, she founded Tomayia Colvin Education, an online education platform for photographers, so that others can learn how to run a successful photography business while being inclusive. From body positivity to the LGBTQ+ community, Tomayia encourages photographers to create a business that honors and showcases diversity.

Jaida Grey Eagle is an Oglala Lakota artist, currently located in St. Paul, MN. Jaida is a photojournalist, producer, beadwork artist, and writer. She is a member of the Women’s Photograph, Indigenous Photograph, and 400 Years Project.
She is a Report for America Fellow with the Sahan Journal covering communities of color in the Twin Cities. She is also researching Indigenous photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts as an ongoing former Curatorial Fellow.
Jaida is a co-producer on the Sisters Rising Documentary, which is the story of six Native American women reclaiming personal and tribal sovereignty in the face of ongoing sexual violence against Indigenous women in the United States and has recently received an Honorable Mention at the Big Sky Doc Festival. She is passionate about bringing awareness to indigenous issues, especially those which impact indigenous women.
She is also a beadwork artist whose work can be found here. Her work is inspired by her family's usage of color, passed down from a great grandmother’s star-quilt color-philosophy of using six colors or more in every piece. Jaida creates abstractions of her great grandmother's star quilts as fringed earrings with a blending of colors that are significant to her family's legacy as Lakota artists.

Raquita Henderson is the founder and owner of Pinxit Photography, a wedding and portrait photographer and videographer team based in St. Louis, Missouri. Raquita travels across the U.S. and specializes in fun, eclectic and relationship-focused wedding and portrait photography.

Sophia Barrett Studios is a female-owned boutique studio located in the heart of Atlanta, GA. Sophia's portraiture is fueled by her desire to create idiosyncratic art that will speak volumes about the moment captured for generations to come. She comprehensively approaches each session to ensure no detail is overlooked towards hitting the mark. Some of the things she accomplishes for each session include creative planning, the styling of participants, set creations, and making headdresses, gowns, and other items. She believes that clients commission her to create a piece of art, not just capture a pretty photo. An integral part of her service is her foundation in connecting emotionally with her clients before the portrait session. Trust is woven into the layers so that clients are more receptive to the breathing techniques used to release tension in their body and open to incorporating fluidity in each movement. The total package equals an emotive piece of artistry. The acclamatory vibrations of her studio facilitate a transformative aura for clients to tap into their ultra confidence.

Although she is well known for her work within the maternity realm, her portfolio includes Motherhood, Family, Modern Portraits, Industry-related commercial work, and Weddings. Jerzy Kosinski once said that "the principle of true art is not to portray but to evoke." That is a statement that Sophia lives out through her work. Always willing to take the road less traveled to have the desired result. Her most prized role is as a mother to a budding artist in her own right Emine and loving wife to her wonderfully supportive husband, Derrick.

San Francisco-based photographer Anna Kuperberg's commissioned family photographs are informed by a background in fine art and photojournalism. She started out as an AP photographer straight out of college at Washington University in St Louis, then moved to San Francisco for an MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute with a Murphy Award from the San Francisco Foundation. Her street photographs from St Louis have been exhibited in a solo show at the St Louis Art Museum (2004) and Blue Sky Gallery in Portland (2006) as well as several group shows.

Jason grew up in tiny Bristol, RI and now lives in Kansas City, where he runs his studio with his wife, Allison. Their kids Avery (19) and Calen (17) both seemed to have inherited the creative gene [whew!]. 

Jason started shooting at age 15 as a stringer for a local paper, then focused on fine art photography for many years. Eventually, all roads led to where he is now. When asked what he shoots, he simply says, “I photograph people.” Weddings, families, bands, headshots. . .for Jason it’s all about the stories behind the faces. And the passion for telling those stories has now sparked something new. The Legado Project. He can’t wait to tell you all about it.

Rachel Greiman is a copywriter and documentary family photographer in Denver, CO.

With a degree in photojournalism and a decade of experience writing and photographing in the nonprofit world, Rachel started Green Chair Stories: a company committed to writing websites that get photographers booked. It’s run on empathy and storytelling, getting to the heart of why photographers do what they do and what makes them different from the other photographer down the street. 

Every website tells a story. And photos are, unfortunately, only half of it. Rachel helps photographers tell the story they mean to, with the words that keep their favorite people sliding into their DMs.