Idris Talib Solomon is an award-winning photojournalist and art director based in New York City. He has a versatile background in graphic design, photography, video, and art direction. He has several years of experience in advertising and is currently on contract at HBO as an art director. He is especially passionate about documenting communities that lack proper representation; sharing their stories, culture, and the beauty of their everyday lives.  

He has photographed for The New York Times, Amazon Prime, HBO, ESPN, Reuters and The Drone Racing League.

He is the host and creative director of The Black Shutter Podcast, a series of conversations with Black photographers, filmmakers, editors and creative business folks.

Torsten Kjellstrand has been a photographer since the Dark Ages, which is about when his people stopped pillaging Europe in favor of full time peaceful fishing, farming, herding reindeer, picking berries and quiet visual storytelling. When he manages enough courage and discipline, Kjellstrand tells the stories that few others are paying attention to. Famous people bore him. Sports feel kind of repetitive. Politicians make him sneeze. Ordinary people feel extraordinary, and are too often misrepresented or unrepresented in the stories we tell with our pictures. Torsten also makes films - same rules as the pictures.

Ariel Zambelich is a Lead Photo Editor for the Wall Street Journal. She previously worked at The Intercept, NPR Visuals and WIRED, and was a freelance photographer for over a decade. She is also on the board of Authority Collective, an organization that amplifies the voices of female-identifying and non-binary lens-based creators of color through community action.

Gabrielle Lurie has been a staff photographer at The San Francisco Chronicle since 2016. Most recently she began organizing the Bay Area Women Photograph group where photographers in the San Francisco area gather for events, to share ideas and collaborate on work.

Lurie was twice recognized as Photographer of the Year by Pictures of the Year International. She was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize. She studied art history and fine art photography at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

In 2013 Sarah Leen became the first female Director of Photography at National Geographic Partners. In late 2019 she founded the Visual Thinking Collective, a community for independent women editors dedicated to visual storytelling. 

As a student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Leen was the first woman to receive the College Photographer of the Year award. For 20 years she worked as a freelance photographer for the National Geographic magazine until 2004 when she joined the staff as a Senior Photo Editor. 

Leen currently works with photographers and agencies consulting and editing projects and books, including America, Again with VII Photo, the 2020 FotoEvidence World Press Photo Book winner HABIBI by Antonio Faccilongo, Anders Wo by Petra Barth and Like a Bird by Johanna-Maria Fritz. 

Leen mentors photographers and teaches visual storytelling at the Missouri Photo Workshops, Maine Media Workshops, Eddie Adams Workshop and Santa Fe Photo Workshop.

Melissa Farlow is a freelance photojournalist who has worked extensively for National Geographic magazine on more than 20 projects in the American West, South America, Quebec, Alaska, the Alps and the Okefenokee Swamp.

Awarded a Pulitzer Prize with the staff of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Farlow received a National Headliner Award as well as Pictures of the Year portfolio honors while at the Pittsburgh Press. Named Distinguished Alumni by the IU School of Journalism, she was inducted into Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 2013.

In addition to projects for the Heinz Endowments, the Ford Foundation and Habitat for Humanity, her work is published in Smithsonian, GEO, LIFE, American Craft, American Bungalow, National Geographic Traveler and Sierra magazines. Farlow received a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. She teaches workshops and is a frequent lecturer as well as a photography consultant with The Photo Society. 

Randy Olson is a photographer in the documentary tradition. Randy’s more than 30 years working on National Geographic projects have taken him to almost every continent. National Geographic Society published a book of his work in 2011 in their Masters of Photography series. Olson was the Magazine Photographer of the Year in the 2003 Pictures of the Year International (POYi) competition, and was also awarded POYi’s Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 1991 — one of only two photographers to win in both media in the largest photojournalism contest operating continuously since World War II.

In 2011, Randy founded The Photo Society. The purpose of the organization is to find economic opportunities and provide exposure to members as the economics of print dwindles. While working as a newspaper photographer at The Pittsburgh Press, Olson received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship in 1995 to support a seven-year project documenting a family with AIDS, and a first-place Robert F. Kennedy Award for his story on problems with Section 8 housing in 1991. He was also awarded the Nikon Sabbatical grant and a grant from the National Archives to save the Pictures of the Year collection.

Mallory Benedict is a transmedia storytelling producer currently on the Camera and Photos team at Apple. Previously, she was a photo editor for National Geographic for nearly 10 years where she commissioned original photography for long and short-form stories on various platforms. Benedict was also the Programs Manager for Women Photograph, a nonprofit designed to elevate the work of women and non-binary photographers around the globe. 

Benedict's photo editing work has been recognized by the American Society of Magazine Editors, National Press Photographer’s Association, Pictures of the Year International and Society of Publication Designers. She is a graduate of the Missouri’s School of Journalism.

MaryAnne Golon is the Director of Photography at The Washington Post. Before joining The Post in 2012, she was the director of photography at Time Magazine, where she was a senior photography editor for more than 20 years. 

Golon graduated with honors from The University of Florida with a B.S. in Journalism. She previously curated Look 3: The Festival of the Photograph and help guide the 2-year product build of a digital asset management system for a major non-profit organization. 

David M. Barreda is a visual editor, multimedia producer, curator, and journalist based in Oakland, California. He is currently a senior photo editor at National Geographic and a core team member of Diversify Photo. 

Previously, David was a photo editor at Earthjustice, a founding editor at Topic, and a founding editor for ChinaFile where he launched the Abigail Cohen Fellowship in Documentary Photography in collaboration with the Magnum Foundation. 

He has more than 20 years of visual journalism experience and prior to editing, he worked as a staff photojournalist at the San Jose Mercury News, the Rocky Mountain News, the Valley News, the Tallahassee Democrat, and the Herald of Randolph. 

He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he received his Master’s degree, and of Middlebury College, where he majored in Geography and Environmental Studies. Born in southern Peru and raised on a sheep farm in Vermont, David lives with his partner, their 11-year-old daughter, and Dandelion, a poodle-terrier, Covid-adoptee, rescue dog.