Lisa Kristine, a globally celebrated photographer and activist, has been pivotal in the anti-slavery and human trafficking movement. Lisa has published 6 books and is the subject of four documentaries, and her work on slavery is featured in three films. The feature film SOLD, made by Oscar award-winning team Emma Thompson and Jeffrey Brown, includes a character inspired by Lisa and played by Gillian Anderson. She is a humanitarian photographer that has presented to the UN General Assembly, the UK Parliament Association, French Presidency of the European Union, The Vatican and Nobel Laureate and Leaders Summit.
Andy is a regular contributor to National Geographic, known widely for his incredible night photography and awesome landscapes. He is a SmugMug Ambassador and outdoor adventure photographer working for countless outdoor brands. Andy has studied art his entire life, starting with pastels, sketching, and oil painting in his Grandmother’s studio. Describing himself as “location-independent,” Andy travels by kitted-out RV with his wife, children, and pets to chase down moments of earthly perfection, finding purpose and perspective along the way. While chasing his dream of sharing the beauty of the Earth, he hopes to inspire others to leave a better trace.
Neo Ntsoma is an award winning photographer, educator, curator, visual content strategist and creative consultant from South Africa. She is the recipient of the National Geographic All Roads Photography Award, the first female recipient of the Mohamed Amin Award, the CNN African Journalist of the Year Photography Prize, and named one of the ‘100 Most Influential Women’ by Africa’s largest media group, Media24. She has been a guest at the New York International Centre for Photography, Stanford University, Yale University, as well as Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Bangladesh. Neo also serves as a global nominator in narrative art and visual storytelling for the well-known Joop Swart Masterclass and the 6×6 Global Talent Program of World Press Photo. Cosmopolitan magazine included her in their top thirty “awesome women” and she was also featured in the Mail & Guardian bulletin of Top 100 Women Changing South Africa.
Chris Rainier is considered one of the leading documentary photographers working today, and was named one of the 100 most influential people working in photography today by American Photo Magazine. His enigmatic images of sacred places and indigenous peoples of the planet have been featured in preeminent publications including Time, Life, National Geographic publications, Outside, Conde Nast Traveler, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Mens Journal, Islands, The New Yorker, German and French Geo, and the publications of the International Red Cross, The United Nations, and Amnesty International. Chris specializes in documenting indigenous cultures. His life’s mission is to aid the empowerment of Indigenous peoples, enhancing their cultures and lives, through facilitating their appropriation of photography and technology. He teaches seminars internationally as a tool for worldwide social change, and is a requested lecturer by distinguished organizations and institutions. Rainier was recently elected a Fellow at the Royal Geographic Society in London. He is also a National Geographic Fellow, documenting indigenous cultures for the Societies Cultures Initiative, and is the Founder of the Cultural Sanctuaries Foundation.
Martin has spent more than 400 demanding days working in the Arctic and Antarctic on more than 20 polar expeditions and assignments. Several of these endeavors have focused on collecting data to help scientists better understand our planet. Time magazine has acknowledged Martin’s contribution to science with its prestigious Hero of the Environment award for his research work on multiple surveys of the frozen Arctic Ocean.
Mark is a fifth-generation American-Chinese. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1988, he was awarded a George Peabody Gardner Traveling Fellowship to spend a year taking pictures in his ancestral homeland. In 1992, he again visited China as an artist-in-residence at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, sponsored by a fellowship from the Wallace Foundation. In 2003, Leong joined the photo agency, Redux Pictures. His book China Obscura was published in 2004. He is a contributing photographer for National Geographic. HIs photos have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, Smithsonian, Stern, Fortune and Time. His work has been recognized with awards from National Endowment for the Arts (1992), Fifty Crows International Fund for Documentary Photography (2002), the Overseas Press Club (2007) and the Open Society Foundation (2005, 2014) among others. In 2010, he was named the Veolia Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year for his regional coverage of the Asian wildlife trade.
Known for her unique style of photojournalism, Britta has been named one of the most influential photographers of our time. She has won numerous international awards and works with authorities, charities, museums, institutions and environmental organizations, documenting crimes against wildlife and nature. She is the co-creator and editor of two acclaimed initiatives: Photographers Against Wildlife Crime joined forces to use their iconic images to help bring an end to the illegal wildlife trade in our lifetime. The Evidence Project - a collection of her own images and photographs by some of the world's best photographers, presenting a selection of powerful stories, to call upon governments, law makers, opinion shapers and the general public, to make the right choices to secure a safe future for humans and animals alike.
From the peaks of the Canadian Rockies to iceberg-laden seas off the coast of Greenland, Paul Zizka’s journey to capture the “under-documented” is a testament to his passion for exploration, his creative vision and fierce sense of determination. He is also passionate about sharing the beauty and grandeur of his own home country and was named a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 2017.