ELIANE LAFFONT, Editorial Director of Hachette Filipacchi Medias since 2001, supervises the photographic production of the HFM group. A legend in the field of photojournalism, Laffont opened the US office of Gamma Press Images with her husband, Jean-Pierre Laffont, in 1968. In 1973 she co-founded the Sygma Photo News Agency serving as General Manager of North America. Under her leadership Sygma became the world’s largest photo news agency. In 1999 Corbis acquired Sygma and she was appointed general manager of Corbis Sygma US. She has served on many international juries and edited numerous photographic books and received the Palm Beach Photographic Centre’s FotoFusion Golden Career Award in 2006.
JEAN-PIERRE LAFFONT's work has appeared in major publications worldwide including TIME, Newsweek, New York Times, Paris Match, Figaro Magazine, Stern, Bunte, Epoca, London Sunday Times Magazine and Manchete. He covered most of the world’s important news events for the last 35 years. A staff photographer for Status magazine and U.S. correspondent for the French agency Reporters Associes, he later founded the US bureau of Gamma with his wife Eliane. In 1973 theyco-founded Sygma Photo News. In 1999 Corbis acquired Sygma, and JP Laffont was appointed General Director of Corbis Sygma US. From 2000 to 2002 he was General Manager of Gamma Press USA.
MARTA LAVANDIER was named a News Editor for Photos by the Associated Press in June 2007. She coordinates daily coverage of news, sports, features and breaking news in Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. She manages and supervises 11 staff photographers and a small army of freelance photographers. Lavandier was the AP’s Administrative Photo Editor for Florida from 2003-2007. She was an AP staff photographer based in Miami from 1993-2003, covering news, breaking news, sports and features in Florida. She also covered national and international news and sporting events.Prior to joining the AP, she was a staff photographer at The Boston Globe, The Patriot Ledger, and an AP freelance photographer in Boston.
SARAH LEEN switched last year from freelance photography for National Geographic to joining the magazine staff as a picture editor and is now responsible for story concepts and production, working with assigned photographers and editing photographs. Her assignmentstook her to Lake Baikal in Siberia, the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia’s far east, Macedonia, the Mexican volcano Popocatepetl and America’s suburbs shooting urban sprawl. She was also a staff photographer for the Topeka Capital-Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her final story for National Geographic magazine, “After Oil,” about alternative energy, was the August 2005 cover story.
J. TOMAS LOPEZ
 © J. Thomas Lopez
is a Florida Artist, Cintas Foundation Fellowship,
NEA Award in the Visual Arts recipient, nationally and internationally known for his large scale digital prints. His work is included in many permanent collections: The Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of American Arts; The Biblioteque Nationale de France, The International Museum of Photography, and many other museums and private collections. Lopez received a Masters degree in Media Arts from the University of South Carolina in film and video and his M.F.A. from the University of South Florida. His work has been shown across the U.S., Europe, Asia, and in numerous publications.
JOHN J. LOPINOT has been an editor and photojournalist at the
Palm Beach Post for the past 30 years. He has won more than 100 awards for his photography and newspaper design. He specializes in nature, close-up, flash and underwater photography. His work has appeared in numerous national publications.
RICHARD MACKSON is Director and VP, External Relations, Office of the CTO, Eastman Kodak Co. An entrepreneur, inventor and photographer
he has a 30+ year relationship shooting for Sports Illustrated as well as doing aerial photography for TIME and National Geographic. He established Westside Processing Inc., a full service photo lab in Santa Monica, CA where he designed, built and patented the first computer-controlled “dip and dunk” processors. His crowning achievement was, as a consultant, helping Kodak redesign the Kodachrome process, which eventually brought him to Kodak, where he is playing a central role in their transition to digital technology.
BEN MARTIN, co-owner and creative director of Pomegranate Press, Ltd., an international book publishing company, is also an award winning photojournalist, advertising and corporate photographer with clients worldwide. Martin’s newspaperman father gave him his first camera at age eight, and he became the youngest member of NPPA, working for the Salisbury (NC) Post at fifteen. Coming to NY at the invitation of LIFE magazine’s legendary picture editor Wilson Hicks to be a LIFE photographer-trainee, he went on to become TIME magazine’s first contract staff photographer and TIME’s Senior Photographer for 33 years, covering myriad assignments for all of TIME Inc.’s magazines and divisions worldwide.
SCOTT McKIERNAN built a successful career as a photojournalist shooting for major magazines such as Paris Match, Stern and Newsweek. While an active shooter, he built the first editorial picture database in the early hours of the world wide web, before founding ZUMA Press and becoming agent to some 1,200 of the world’s most respected photojournalists, 60 large dailies and picture agencies. ZUMA is now the largest independent picture agency and wire service in the world, publishing ZUMA Press Books, focused on documentary picture books that need to be seen, DOUBLEtruck Magazine, the ultimate showcase of cutting-edge photojournalism; and zReportage.com, the high-end, premium photojournalism service for stories that need to be told.
JOSEPH MEEHAN
 © Joseph Meehan
has been a commercial photographer and writer for more than 30 years. He was the Senior Technical & New Products Editor with Photo District News for 12 years and the author of 25 books on photography. These include the best selling, “The Photographer’s Guide to Using Filters”, Amphoto (reviewed by the New York Times as containing images “alive with color and sparkling with light”) and “The Complete Guide to Filters in Digital Photography” Sterling/Lark.
FRANK MICELOTTA has been photographing music, entertainment, and pop culture for over 25 years. After working as the first staff photographer for Agence France-Presse in N.Y. in 1987 Frank returned to freelancing and made a name for himself in the entertainment business. In 1998, he founded the entertainment photo agency ImageDirect, which was acquired by Getty Images in 2003. His clients include Madonna, Paul McCartney, Beyonce, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Usher, the Rolling Stones, and many other artists as well as all of the major record labels, TV and cable networks. He has been the official photographer for the MTV Video Music Awards for the last 23 years and served as Director of Still Photography for the Grammy Awards from 1998 to 2002.
JUDY MILLER has been representing photographers in New York for almost 25 years. She began her career working with photojournalists-pitching, editing and producing stories for top news magazines in the United States and abroad. Before opening her own agency, she spent nine years representing advertising photographers at a major agency. Currently, Judith Miller Inc. represents 16 photographers worldwide, in both the editorial and advertising areas. Editorial clients include Travel and Leisure, Vanity Fair, British Vogue, Bazaar, Vogue Living, Domino, Cookie. Advertising clients include Gap, American Express, Starbucks, RitzCarlton, Macy's, Microsoft and Samsung.
PAUL MOAKLEY has worked as a senior photo editor at Newsweek magazine for the past four years. Previously he was photo editor of PDN (Photo District News). He is curator at the Alice Austen House Museum where in the past 5 years he has produced exhibitions with Nina Berman, Cristobal Hara, Tim Hetherington, Trent Parke, Larry Towell, and many others. He also teaches contemporary photo history at New York’s School of Visual Arts. In his spare time he works on documentary projects and works as a contributor for Out magazine and The Fader.
ANDREA MODICA an Associate Professor in the Photography Dept at Drexel University in Philadelphis, PA., is one of contemporary photography’s most important imagemakers. Her first two books, Minor League, a study of the world of minor league baseball, and Treadwell, a series of images on adolescence in rural America, have met with critical acclaim. Modica’s photographs have been exhibited widely and are in numerous collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale and the Whitney Museum of Art.
RALPH MORSE was a staff photographer for both LIFE and TIME magazines. As LIFE’s specialist in technical photography, he covered the NASA space program from its inception, exclusively photographing the original seven astronauts. Ralph documented World War ll combat for LIFE magazine in both the Pacific and in Europe, photographing the German surrender at Reims in 1945 as the pool photographer. He was recently awarded the NPPA’s prestigious Sprague Lifetime Achievement Award, one of photojournalism’s highest honors.
DAVID MUENCH has photographed the natural landscape for half a century. Since childhood travels with his father, photographer Josef Muench, he has continued to explore the earth through his camera lens. An innovator in landscape photography, he believes Nature is his greatest teacher. (More formal education includes the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Art Center School of Design.) Considering his work to be a celebration of the earth and the mystical forces of nature that help shape our destinies, he wants his photographs to increase people’s awareness of the necessity to preserve what is wild in its natural state.
MARC MUENCH has been a professional landscape and sports photographer since finishing his studies at Pasadena Art Center College of Design in 1989. He serves as President of Muench Photography, Inc. while continuing to shoot for the Muench Photography collection. A Kodak Photo Icon. Marc's photography has appeared in countless magazines and books, major advertising campaigns, calendars, note cards, postcards, posters and annual reports. His photographic specialty is incorporating people within the landscape, in various sports and recreational activities, including skiing, climbing, biking, hiking, camping and scuba diving.
MATTHEW NAYTHONS is co-founder, CEO and President of EpiCom media. Projects include A Day in the Life of the U. S. Armed Forces and A Day in the Life of the American Woman (2005). Also founder of Epicenter Communications whose 13 photojournalism, multimedia, and Internet projects include The Face of Mercy: A Photographic History of Medicine at War; Sarajevo: A Portrait of the Siege,; and Clinton: A Portrait of Victory. An MD specialist in emergency medicine for eighteen years (1972 - 1990), between shifts in hospitals he built an award-winning career as a photojournalist for Newsweek and TIME, covering conflicts from Central America to Southeast Asia.
MARJORIE NEIKRUG, president of Neikrug Photographica, Ltd., is a certified senior member of the American Society of Appraisers, tested in Personal Property /Fine Art Photography. On the Board of Directors of the ASA since 1974, she served as President of the NY chapter and in other society offices. She is also on the Board of the Appraisers Association of America, serving on several AAA committees, and is a member of the New England Appraisers Association and the Association of International Photography Art Dealers. She has curated exhibitions and written widely on appraisals and received the John Singleton Copely Medal from the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, among other honors.
STEVEN NESTLER is known for his beautifully crafted prints of intimate and personal landscapes. Numerous permanent collections, including; The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in N.Y.; The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the art museums of Harvard and Stanford Universities have acquired his work. Many artists, including Ansel Adams, Paul Caponigro, Fred Picker, and Siegfried Halus, have collected his images. For over 30 years, Nestler has taught classes and workshops in photographic vision, design, and technique for numerous universities and photographic organizations.
LUCIAN PERKINS
 © Lucian Perkins
a two time Pulitzer Prize winner (1995 & 2000), is a staff photographer for The Washington Post. He has covered many major events of the last twenty years including the war in Bosnia, the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank, the Gulf War, and Russia since 1988, and daily and political events in Washington, DC. In 1995 his photo of a young Chechnyan boy was awarded World Press Photo of the Year, and in 1994 he was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year by the NPPA for a portfolio of stories on Russia and a behind the scenes look at the NY fashion shows, later published in a book entitled Runway Madness.
ROBERT PLEDGE is president of Contact Press Images, which he founded with American photographer David Burnett in N. Y. in 1976; he has edited many books and curated exhibitions throughout the world, in Amsterdam, Bamako, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, Dhaka, Lausanne, London, Madrid, Mexico City, New Delhi, N.Y, Paris, and Tokyo. A major presence in the photographic community, he has conducted master classes in Bangladesh, China, India, Mali, Turkey, and Switzerland, and been on many juries, including the W. Eugene Smith Fund in the USA, the CNA Mosaique program in Luxembourg, and the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam, which he chaired in 2001.
JOHN REUTER was born in Chicago, IL. He received his BA in photography at the SUNY College of Geneseo, his MA and MFA at the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History. Following graduate school he became the principal photographer and later Director of the Polaroid 20x24 Studio in New York. Long an innovator in Polaroid experimentation, Reuter began exploring digital imaging in the early 1990’s. He has taught Photoshop classes nationally since 1995 and last year began his highly rated podcast on “Creative Photoshop”, available at www.johnreuter.libsyn.com and in iTunes. This is John’s eleventh Fotofusion
CARMIN ROMANELLI, a 25-year veteran of the sports photography industry, is Getty Images Vice President of Sports Business Development where he develops and manages sports relationships in North America with the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, NASCAR, USOC, Collegiate Sports and USTA, dealing with every major editorial and commercial user of sports imagery. Prior to joining Getty Images Romanelli spent 12 years building and leading NBA Photos. He also was Photography Director of the short-lived National Sports Daily and for several years manager of the Time Life Photo Lab.
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