Keynote Speakers
Hailing from Minnesota, Annie Griffiths was one of the first women photographers to work for National Geographic, photographing in more than 100 countries during her career for dozens of magazine and book projects.
Annie has published several books, including Simply Beautiful Photographs; A Camera, Two Kids and A Camel; and Last Stand, America’s Virgin Lands with author Barbara Kingsolver. She is currently writing a memoir and writes weekly at You’re Not That Nice.
In addition to her magazine work, Annie is deeply committed to photographing for aid organizations. She’s the Founder of Ripple Effect Images, a collective of photographers who document programs that empower women and girls in the developing world. Leveraging Ripple’s compelling storytelling, aid organizations have raised millions of dollars, expanded their programs to multiple countries, and shown that women and girls are the best investment the world can make in our shared future.
Annie is a founding member of The International League of Conservation Photographers and has received awards from the National Press Photographers Association, Heifer International, the National Organization of Women, The University of Minnesota, and the White House News Photographers Association.
Lisa Krantz, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the University of Montana School of Journalism and a recent graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism’s doctoral program. Her research focuses on the intersection of journalism and trauma, particularly how journalists cover mass shootings – a topic she began exploring as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University (2019-2020) and as an Ochberg Fellow with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.
Lisa was a newspaper photographer for 24 years, most recently at the San Antonio Express-News in Texas, and continues photographing for national and international news organizations. She is part of The Washington Post team that won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for the series “American Icon” about the devastating impact of the AR-15. She is also a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature photography. She has won the Pictures of the Year International (POYi) Community Awareness Award and placed in POYi’s Newspaper Photographer of the Year category. World Press Photo, NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism, and the Scripps Howard Awards have also recognized her work.
She serves on the National Press Photographers Association Board of Directors and is Assistant Director for the College Photographer of the Year (CPOY) competition.
Chip Somodevilla is a staff photographer for Getty Images based in Washington, DC.
Before moving to Washington in 2005, Somodevilla worked for nine years at daily newspapers, including for the Detroit Free Press, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Fort Wayne (Indiana) News-Sentinel. He was named Michigan Press Photographer of the Year in 2003 and his work has been honored by the University of Missouri’s Pictures of the Year International, the Society of News Design and the Atlanta Photojournalist Seminar.
The White House News Photographers Association awarded him Photographer of the Year in 2010 and 2020 and Political Photo of the Year in 2006. Somodevilla was part of a team of Getty Images News photographers that were finalists for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. He was also named the 2016 Northern Short Course Photographer of the Year and the National Press Photographers Association’s 2019 Photographer of the Year.
A 1995 graduate of the University of North Texas, Somodevilla focuses on U.S. politics, extensively reporting on the presidential campaigns of John McCain, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, among others. He has been on assignment for Getty around the world, including South Africa, Rwanda, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Cuba. He lives in Maryland with his wife, Gina Lambright, and their son and daughter.
Breakout Session Speakers
Jake Armour is an independent, self employed commercial photographer with over 35 years in the industry. He has been located in Minneapolis for most of them. His award winning career is rooted in creative partnerships and trust.
Jake and his team have produced iconic imagery for Advertising, Design, Retail, fashion,
corporate and editorial clients in over 18 states and internationally. These days he focuses his energy and lens on honest, iconic portraiture with clients in healthcare, medical, financial, dance, B2B and advertising. Jake is the current President of the ASMP-MSP chapter.
Mark Brown is a filmmaker, photojournalist and marketing/advertising photographer. His first documentary, Sermon of the Serpent (2014), screened at film festivals across the country and abroad. It won best short documentary at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. Mark has made several other short documentaries, including Gaelynn Lea: The Songs We Sing (2018), about Duluth musician and disability rights advocate Gaelynn Lea. The Fishing Hat Bandit was his first feature-length documentary.
He is also director of photography at the University of St. Thomas and an adjunct professor at the university’s College of Arts and Sciences.
Elaine Cromie is a Michigan-based photo editor and photojournalist who helps shape visual journalism for Chalkbeat and Votebeat non-profit news orgs. Previously, Cromie worked as an independent visual journalist contributing to publications including The New York Times, TIME, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Rolling Stone Magazine, Detroit Free Press and others. She was a recent Knight-Wallace fellow at the University of Michigan.
Cromie is an active member in the journalism community organizing with Juntos Photo Cooperative, Authority Collective, Women Photograph, NAHJ, AAJA and others. Born and raised in Colorado to a mixed Uchinaanchu and Puerto Rican family, Elaine is a graduate from University of Colorado Boulder with a degree in journalism.
Carly Danek has been making videos for twenty years. A University of Minnesota Journalism School graduate, she worked as a local TV news photographer for 17 years in Eugene, Tulsa, and Minneapolis, including both WCCO and KARE. She had many grand adventures, met countless amazing people and won a few awards along the way.
In 2021 she left the news business to try her hand in the corporate world. You can now find her telling patient stories, learning about obscure medical conditions and trying to decipher the corporate speak sent to her in emails at Medtronic where she makes videos for internal and external audiences.
Her greatest life achievement was winning 2nd place female in a 50k trail race, for which she won a ceramic fish that now hangs on the wall in her kitchen.
Mike Davis is a visual storytelling consultant, editor, educator and author. His first authored book, about visual storytelling, came out in 2022. Mike directed The Alexia Grants for eight years while holding a chaired faculty position at Syracuse University.
Before teaching, he was a visual leader at National Geographic, The White House and five visually strong U.S. newspapers. Mike was twice named picture editor of the year, as were several of those who worked for him. He has edited more than 40 photo books and hundreds of projects of note, taught and lectured in various settings. He hails from a small town in Nebraska and now lives in Minneapolis.
Deb Pang Davis has a varied career. At present, she is Design Director for RPI-Blurb, an end-to-end book publishing platform for independent authors and creators. She leads a cross functional design team and works to create an environment where her team thrives and builds trust with teams across business, marketing, product, engineering and customer service to create experiences that inform, engage, perform and convert. Prior to RPI/Blurb, Deb was a Sr. UX Designer focused on interactive experiences at DMED (Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution) and a Product Designer at The 19th, an independent news organization.
In 2020, she completed an MFA in Interactive Media at the University of Miami, where she gained a wide range of UX research and data skills, as well as a healthy appreciation and understanding of the design of Al and other emerging technologies. As Assistant Professor of Design at the Newhouse School, Syracuse, Deb taught design to majors and non-majors including creating a marketing and branding class for photography students. She has written and spoken about marketing and branding for the NPPA, ASMP and B&H Photo Video. The early days of her career included art direction and design for newspapers and magazines such as The Seattle Times, The Globe and Mail, The Chicago Tribune, Copley Sun Publications, National Geographic Traveler and Virtuoso Life. When times got tough, Deb grew as a freelancer to an establish a small design studio designing wedding invitations, marketing collateral, brand identity, websites and books with dozens of independent photographers. She is forever grateful to her clients for their trust.
Coburn Dukehart is the Managing Editor of the CatchLight Local program — an initiative to reinvigorate visual journalism in local news. Dukehart has spent more than 20 years as a visual strategist, previously as the associate director of the non-profit newsroom Wisconsin Watch, and as a visual editor at national websites including NPR and National Geographic. Dukehart has an MA in photojournalism from the University of Missouri, and was a member of the 2024 cohort of the Executive Program in News Leadership at CUNY.
In her downtime, she does yoga, brews kombucha and has a complicated relationship with a VW Eurovan. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her family but is always happy to travel.
Carlos Gonzalez is a veteran staff photographer at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. He has covered a wide range of assignments from local news, sports, features and international stories. He has covered the Olympics, Super Bowls and his work has been recognized with various honors including POYi, NPPA and National Headliner awards for his sports and news photography.
Gonzalez’s work was part of the Star Tribune’s Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the police killing of George Floyd and the fallout. He was a 2022 fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, and he has taught multiple semesters as an inclusion fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
His work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, TIME, Sporting News and National Geographic, among many others.
Throughout his 50-year career, Dave LaBelle has been a photographer, editor, teacher, author and lecturer. After beginning at the Ventura County (California) Star-Free Press as a weekend sports shooter and l ab man while still in high school in 1969, LaBelle has worked for 20 newspapers and magazines in nine states, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he was assistant manager editor for photography.
LaBelle’s love for feature photography and his ability to hunt out feature ideas has helped him win numerous awards. At age 19, he was NPPA Region 10 Photographer of the Year, an honor he repeated the next two years. He was runner-up to W. Eugene Smith for the first Nikon World Understanding award in 1974 and runner-up for the NPPA Photographer of the Year award in 1979. In 1991, NPPA honored LaBelle with the Robin F. Garland Award for photojournalism education. And in 2002, the Photographic Society of America Inc. honored LaBelle with the International Understanding Through Photography award.
LaBelle has also taught photojournalism at Western Kentucky University, the University of Kentucky and directed the photojournalism sequence at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio from 2010-2016. In addition, LaBelle writes a monthly column for Oregon-based Ruralite Magazine, contributes to Florida Currents Magazine, Ojai Magazine in California, and writes a monthly blog at bridgesandangels.wordpress.com. LaBelle’s latest book, and first novel based on the disappearance of his mother in the 1969 flood was published in March 2019. In May of 2022, David and his wife Erin began a job share as reporter/photographers at the Dyersville Commercial, a weekly newspaper in northeast Iowa. In his words, “My life’s mission is to use the gifts God has blessed me with to be a blessing on others in any way I can.”
Stephen Maturen is a freelance photojournalist and photo editor based in St. Paul. He covers breaking news, sports, and politics for a variety of news wire services including Getty Images, AFP, and Reuters. He serves as an on-site photo editor for WWE events and remote photo editor for Getty Images Sports. He covers local story assignments for MPR News.
Stephen has participated in the New York Times Portfolio Review (2022) and Eddie Adams Workshop (2010). He was selected as an artist in residence at the NES Artist Residency in northern Iceland (2013) and as a recipient of The Yunghi Grant (2022).
He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BA in Art and former staff photographer at the Minnesota Daily.
Nicole Neri is a freelance photographer based in Minneapolis.
Her journalistic work focuses on social and environmental issues for a variety of clients including Minnesota Public Radio, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and the Wall Street Journal.
Her artwork focuses on using science to create in-camera abstract scenes discussing concepts like the volatility of rising heat and the unique life-sustaining properties of water.
Brian Peterson is a long-time (and now retired) photojournalist and photo coach at the Star Tribune. A staff photographer for 35 years, he focused his attention most recently on professional sports and the many environmental issues affecting Minnesotans. Peterson has also photographed five winter and summer Olympic Games, the Superbowl and both Twins World Series victories. His photographs have also been published in National Geographic, Sports Illustrated magazines and the New York Times.
He has been recognized nationally and internationally for his work, and has been honored nine times as Minnesota Press Photographer of the Year, has won the Robert F. Kennedy Award, NPPA’s Canon Photo Essay Award, and three regional Emmys for his video work. His sports photography has been honored by the national baseball and football Halls of Fame and the National Press Photographers Association. Peterson has published two books, “Voices for the Land” and “Minnesota – State of Wonders,” and has won three Minnesota Book Awards.
Caroline Yang is a Taiwanese American photographer based in St. Paul. Her work examines issues of identity and culture through storytelling and portraiture, and strives to bring understanding and connection to our communities. Yang graduated from Tufts University in Boston, and worked as an advertising account executive at Fallon before beginning her career as a professional photographer.
Notable projects include documenting the Tour de France, The Saint Paul Ballet, the Twin Cities social justice movement, and more recently, projects utilizing multiple exposures to convey the complexities of a given story.
A member of both Women Photograph and Diversify Photo, Yang’s work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and ProPublica, and has been recognized by Communication Arts and American Photography.
Aaron C. Young, JD, LLM is the principle and founder of Young Entertainment Law, PLLC
with clients that include the Twin Cities Film Fest, award winning filmmakers, producers,
authors, painters, sculptors, song writers, recording artists, professional sports executives, professional athletes, and professional coaches.
Aaron received his Juris Doctor (JD) from Marquette University Law School (Milwaukee), in 2001, and his Master of Laws (LLM) from Southwestern Law School (Los Angeles), in 2003, specializing in Entertainment and Media Law.
Aaron is an Adjunct Professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law teaching The Business of IP: Independent Film Production, and a former Adjunct Professor of Law at Hamline University School of Law teaching Sports Law, Adjunct Professor of Law at William Mitchell College of Law teaching Client Representation, and Adjunct Professor at McNally Smith College of Music teaching Legal Aspects of Music & Entertainment, Business Law, and Contract Law.