Preston Gannaway
Keynote Speaker
cLASS
Preston Gannaway is a Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary photographer and artist. For nearly 20 years, she has focused on intimate stories about American families and marginalized communities while addressing themes such as gender identity, class and our relationship to the landscape. Born and raised in North Carolina, she now lives in Oakland, California.
Gannaway is best known for her long-term projects like Remember Me, which chronicles a family coping with a parent’s terminal illness and was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Her work has also been honored by Pictures of the Year International, Critical Mass and American Photography. She’s been supported by grants from the Getty Images and Chris Hondros Fund Award, The Documentary Project Fund, National Press Photographers Association and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. In 2018 she was invited to be a Light Work Artist in Residence.
Her photographs have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in venues around the world including the Griffin Museum of Photography, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia and San Francisco International Airport Museum.
Editorial clients include New York Times Magazine, California Sunday Magazine, Mother Jones, ESPN, and WIRED among others. Her first monograph, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, about the changing character of a seaside neighborhood along the Chesapeake Bay, was released in 2014. In the spring of 2019, she will be a visiting professor at the University of Montana.
Christine Kenyon
Classes:
Christine believes that photography and cinematography provide a way for us to capture and relate our compelling moments. A way to rewind and relive our experience – a way to tell our story. Living in-the-moment, creates mindful, deliberate awareness of our individual experience. Real, raw, honest, moving, inspiring. She encourages you to find your voice, tell your story.
Laurie Klein
Classes:
Laurie Klein is an award-winning fine art, commercial wedding and portrait photographer and educator. She is the author of Photographing the Female Form with Digital Infrared, and Hand Coloring Black and White Photography, a contributing writer for PPA magazine and Rangefinder Magazine. Her work embodies a soft passionate style that most often depicts the feminine experience, relationships and landscapes.
A gifted photo educator for over 30 years, Laurie teaches classes and workshops both nationally and internationally at Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, Maine Photographic Workshops and others. She also holds yearly mentoring programs for high school students who are interested in photography.
Laurie has a MFA in photography from Ohio U and BFA from RIT. She also studied with Ansel Adams.
See the blog for our interview with Laurie and some of her most recent work!
Annie Griffiths
Classes:
One of the first women photographers to work for National Geographic, Annie Griffiths has photographed in nearly 150 countries during her illustrious career and has worked on dozens of magazine and book projects for National Geographic. Griffiths’ work has also appeared in LIFE, Geo, Smithsonian, Fortune, and Stern, among other publications.
In addition to her magazine work, Griffiths is deeply committed to photographing for aid organizations around the world. She’s the Founder and Executive Director of Ripple Effect Images, a collective of photographers who document programs that empower women and girls in the developing world, especially as they deal with the devastating effects of climate change. Based in Washington, D.C., Ripple has produced 26 films and built a photo archive of over 20,000 images since 2010. Using these assets, Ripple’s aid beneficiaries have raised millions of dollars, expanded their programs to multiple countries, and proven that women and girls are the best investment the world can make in our shared future.
Meghan Davidson
CLASSES:
Dr. Meghan Davidson is a self-taught photographer who just completed a project creating a self-portrait using Polaroid film each and every day for a year. She is currently writing a memoir using these Polaroids as the framework for the book. Meghan is a lover of Polaroid and film, as well as digital photography. She is also a regular contributor to the collective photography website and blog, ViewFinders (formerly Mortal Muses) and on her own blog Life Refocused.
Meghan's Polaroid self-portraiture has been exhibited at theIMPOSSIBLE Project NYC. Her work has been published in UPPERCASE, Digital Photo, Artful Blogging, and Mingle magazines, and included in the crowd-sourced book, This is Happening, published by Chronicle Books. Meghan has had four invited gallery shows in her current hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, where she was awarded the Fan Favorite Award for the 2011 Lincoln PhotoFest.
Meghan is also a Ph.D. psychologist conducting research and teaching at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. She is also a licensed therapist and maintains a small private practice working with clients to help them with their goals and dreams.
Read our interview with Meghan and learn about her #Love Campaign.
Constance Chu
Classes:
Constance is a family and documentary photographer based in San Francisco. She began her photographic career after completing a Doctorate in Psychology with an emphasis in neuroscience, and starting her family. She began her professional work in photography working for Magnum photographer Jim Goldberg, first as his intern then as his interim studio manager. Now that she has made her lifelong passion into a career, she takes photojournalistic photos, making a study of all things evocative, whether enigmatic, agonizing, or delightful. Her goal is to be a historian of the modern time.
Rose Hodges
Class:
Rose is a San Francisco based commercial photographer specializing in product and food photography. She has taught photography for years and is excited to join us at camp.
Rose has photographed accomplished chefs, scenic farms, and fruit vendors; but most importantly, she shoots amazing food! Her background growing up in Germany and love of fresh produce and interesting flavors makes her the perfect food photographer.
Her talent has not gone unnoticed, Rose has won awards from Graphis, Communication Arts, the Pro Bono Center, the American Photographers Association, and Professional Photographers of America.
Suzanne O’Brien
Class:
Suzanne believes in memory keeping that is simple, modern and tangible. She splits her business time between photography and photo book design and loves helping people tell their stories. Before founding Suzanne O’Brien Studio, Suzanne had a career in investment banking and private equity. She is the mom of two pretty cool kids and is married to an adventure-seeking husband. A Midwesterner at heart, she has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 20+ years and can’t wait to get to know all of the Fireflies this year!
Veronica Cotter
Classes:
Veronica is the Education Development Manager for Hahnemühle USA. Veronica has been in the Photo & Imaging Industry for more than thirty years. Her career began in analogue, working for companies that produced a high end range of B&W films and papers. Her current position with Hahnemühle USA provides the opportunity to connect with image makers to discuss the importance of printing and paper choice
Kevin Anthuis
CLASSES:
Wide Format Sales Manager, Hahnemühle USA. Kevin’s studies of Photography and Physics in his undergraduate education and decades of related work experiences has afforded him well rounded career. Kevin employs his technical knowledge and experience to promote his artistic expressions in the printed world. He brings expertise in color management, nondestructive image archiving and manipulation and, an in-depth understanding of Fine Art printing with today’s inkjet printers. He continues his passion for photography in his work with Hahnemühle and his own teaching style and photography endeavors and workshops alike.
Alyssa DeCaro
CLASS: Body of Sound: A Journey Into Rhythm, Voice & Movement
Alyssa is a yoga teacher, group facilitator, dancer, and musician with 20+ years of experience. In 2006, Alyssa founded BODY OF SOUND and is dedicated to helping others tune in to the body as their “essential instrument” through movement, breath, rhythm, and ensemble connection. Her work integrates the audience/performer and student/teacher relationships to create an interactive, rhythmic, ensemble experience. Alyssa believes these to be the most effective tools to break down barriers and establish connection. When leading groups, Alyssa has a natural ability to shape the collective field, transforming an ordinary room into an inspiring space where practice and play intertwine.
Alyssa leads our Thursday evening get together. Body of Sound: A Journey Into Rhythm, Voice & Movement Body of Sound is a celebration of the body as your most essential instrument…in life, in play, and in practice. This rhythmic adventure allows discovery and freedom through creative expression that lends itself to every aspect of your life. As you tune your own instrument, you become attuned to the ensemble around you everywhere, and your place within it.
Previous Teachers
Julieanne Kost
Named one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business,” Julieanne Kost is a Principal Evangelist at Adobe Systems, responsible for fostering relationships with customers through meaningful and inspirational Photoshop and Lightroom instruction. As a highly sought-after speaker for the industry-standard Digital Imaging franchise, she devises and presents motivating and educational training sessions, sharing original techniques and tutorials worldwide.
Kost is well-known for her unique approach to instruction, infusing practical tips and tricks with an equal amount of humor and creativity that keeps audiences entertained and engaged.
In her work, Julieanne combines a passion for photography, a mastery of digital imaging techniques and knowledge gained from a degree in psychology, in order to construct a world similar enough to appear familiar, yet obviously an interpretation of the physical reality that surrounds us.
Although the images are highly personal representations of her dreams and personal reality, they are abstract enough to allow individual interpretation (based on each individual’s history and life experiences). Julieanne hopes to engage the viewer with the image to allow them to leave the reality that they hold true and explore, even if only for an instant, and venture into the visual placeholder of her thoughts and dreams.
She is also the author of “Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking,” and “Passenger Seat: Creating a Photographic Project from Conception through Execution in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom”
Leanne Hansen
Leanne has been shooting with a little film camera since middle school. She has recently moved to Montana where she captures early morning light in the big sky state. Leanne works as a commercial and fine art photographer in both Montana and her part-time home in Marin County, CA. She has participated in numerous group shows at The Image Flow, the O'Hanlon Center for the Arts, and Marin Open Studios, has been published in the Bay Area Where Guestbook and Edible Marin and Wine Country, and her fine art prints are included in private and corporate collections across the country. Leanne teaches a variety of classes in expressive photography: "The Language of Light for Photographers," "Still Life Photography," and "Motion Blur & Long Exposure for Expressive Images." At camp Leanne will lead a pre-dawn photo session, her favorite time of day.
Brooke Shaden
Brooke was born in March of 1987 in Lancaster, PA, USA. She grew up near the "Amish Country" until attending Temple University. Brooke was photographically born in December 2008 after graduating from Temple with bachelor degrees in film and English.
She began creating self-portraits for ease and to have full control over the images, and has since grown into a self-portrait fine art photographer. Self portraiture for her is not autobiographical in nature. Instead, she places herself within environments she wishes to explore, where secrets are exposed, impossibilities are tested, and life is questioned in eras beyond our own.
Brooke works to capture fantastic realities within her photographic frame. By using painterly techniques as well as the square format, traditional photographic properties are replaced by otherworldly elements.
Pei Ketron
Pei Ketron is a photographer, educator, and traveler based in San Francisco. She specializes in commercial, travel, and humanitarian work worldwide. In addition to her experience with DSLR and medium-format film photography, Pei is also an accomplished mobile photographer and has amassed a following of nearly a million users on Instagram. She also teaches photography workshops and private lessons.
Prior to embarking on a career in photography, Pei spent a decade as an elementary school special education teacher. She was born in Taiwan and raised on the Navajo Nation in Arizona as part of a biracial household. As a child, she spent summers enduring the monsoons of the tropics and the remainder of the year running barefoot in the deserts of the American Southwest.
Learn more about Pei's journey in our interview.