Photography Conference Speakers
We’re so happy to have an amazing line-up of ladies who will be speaking and teaching at our I Heart Faces Photography Conference! We have brought together a wide variety of photographers, speakers and teachers who specialize in various niches so that every type of photographer will have appealing classes to learn from.
2013 Keynote Speaker
Tamara Lackey
Speakers & Teachers
On Saturday, along with our key note speaker we have a busy schedule planned with break-out teaching sessions, discussion panels and live teaching photo sessions all taught by a mix of fantastic photographers, bloggers and the entire I Heart Faces Creative Team. All of these ladies have a passion to help and teach others what they know!
Jennifer Tonetti-Spellman
Jennifer Tonetti-Spellman is a natural light, children’s photographer based in New York. After working in publishing for 10 years, she turned her long time hobby into a business at the start of 2009 and JellyBean Pictures was born. Her work reflects natural images of children that are real, raw, and organic. She fully embraces a philosophy of ‘come as you are’ when filming.
As a part of the I Heart Faces creative team, Jennifer has written numerous photography tutorials and has become a wonderful teacher to the community, helping many people grow and learn more about their hobby and trade.
Jennifer’s {don’t} say cheese manual epitomizes her approach in getting children to smile naturally. ‘If you want natural smiles, you have to be able to make them smile. Children can sniff out a fake a mile away.’ Hence why 90% of Jennifer’s jeans are ripped at the knees from crawling, falling, and sliding her way into laughs. Whatever it takes to capture awesome.
She lives in Wetschester with her husband, daughter and shelter dog. None of them are safe from her camera.
Jean Smith
Jean Smith is a lifestyle photographer currently living in Michigan with her (also photographer) husband and four little boys. While hoping to specialize early in her career, she quickly realized her true passion in photography is people…all genres of people. So, although she works with babies, children, families, seniors, and couples, her specialty is working with people to capture the love, relationships, and emotion seen in her images. When Jean isn’t behind the camera, she is a professional Instagrammar and self proclaimed world traveler. She spends most of her time planning trips that never happen, eating chocolate that she shouldn’t eat, and forever working on mastering that balance that comes with kids, work, husband, and…life.
Hilary Camilleri
Hilary Camilleri has become an award-winning and highly sought family and children’s photographer while also developing an impressive commercial portfolio that includes a diverse collection of work for corporations, actors and singers. She photographs nearly 200 sessions a year and has also been featured on many photography-related blogs. Most recently she won best photographer and best photography studio in her region’s annual Reader’s Choice Awards.
Hilary resides in the Kitchener-Waterloo region in Canada and is excited to travel to Ohio to meet other women in the I Heart Faces community!
Rachel Durik
Rachel Durik is a wedding and portrait photographer based in Southwest Florida. Self-taught in pursuit of good blog photos, Rachel quickly excelled in photography and became a member of the I Heart Faces creative team less than a year after purchasing her first DSLR. As the former “bad picture taker of the family”, Rachel firmly believes that anyone can be taught to become a good photographer. She has since taught hundreds of aspiring professionals in workshops across the country and internationally, specializing in Lightroom and Photoshop training. In addition, Rachel teaches online courses in Lightroom and Photoshop. A former high school teacher, she is an active homeschooling mother of three adventurous children.
Susan Keller
Susan is a woman living amongst dudes. Even her dog is a dude. Her three sons (and husband!) are no longer young, pliable, and enthusiastically cooperative . They are not fond of being posed for pictures. And re-dos??? Pshaw. Not likely. The Kellers are a roadtripping family. And they furthermore live in a place surrounded by immense natural beauty. Given these parameters, is it any wonder, that Susan has morphed into a lifestyle/documentary photographer – one with nearly Ninja-level speed abilities in grabbing a picture quickly without exasperating those being photographed. She shoots wide and close and loves to wrap a “landscape” (be it home or the great outdoors) beautifully around people. She’s passionate about documenting a time and place, about observing & capturing minute, intimate details, about telling a story … without necessarily using words.
Dana Suggs
Dana bought her first DSLR camera in 2007. She had been an artist, mostly oils and charcoals, for many years, but after her first 2 children came, she didn’t have the time for it like she had before. After her daughter was born in 2005, her interest in photography began. She found that photography gave her that almost instant gratification that painting used to give her but she no longer had time for, and it became her creative outlet.
After purchasing her “Big Girl” camera, she learned all she could as fast as she possibly could! Dana drank in all the information she could find (which wasn’t much at the time)! In the beginning, it was just to take beautiful photos of her children but eventually grew from there. Her photography business grew from word of mouth and happy clients. Now, she has come full circle: adopting 3 more beautiful children and she’s gladly taken off her “professional photographer” hat to be Mom again….even if just for a little while. And in the Mom-time, she continues to learn and grow and try new things while capturing the hearts and faces of her 6 children.
Amandalynn Jones
Amandalynn Jones is a commercial and portrait photographer in Madison WI. Raised in a family of artists she has been refining the art of capturing the essence of her subjects since childhood. Her work has been featured in books, magazines, ad campaigns, art museums, and on living room walls worldwide for the past 15 years.
Contributing the success of her business and personal artistic achievements to her positive attitude and her artistic Signature Style, Amandalynn creates memorable, engaging images that translate across a diverse variety of client types, and her positive focus on everything from the art of Posing to Dealing with Difficult Clients, strives to bring out the best in everyone.
A combination of plain English and Midwestern common sense, Amandalynn’s way of sharing her knowledge and skills with other photographers makes her a favorite contributor on the IHF Community forum, as a one-to-one mentor, and in live presentations.
Melissa Hutchinson
2013 marks the 12th year of photographing for artist Melissa Hutchinson ~ over a decade of beautiful, evocative images of children and more recently, teen girls and women. Working for 15 years as a model, she was privileged to work with a wealth of photographers and celebrities from coast to coast. A lifelong artist who excelled in painting and makeup, she explored black & white photography and handpainting photos while studying at the University of Michigan to pursue a career in film/television. Photography of her own children was her personal art, and as interest in her work flourished, so did a career. Last year, she was asked to photograph actress Selma Blair and her baby boy in LA, an exhibition of the intimate connection between mother and child for the Get Real for Kids campaign, published on People.com. While the heart of her work has always been with kids, her colorful journey has evolved to becoming a voice of inspiration and confidence-building for teen girls and women through photography. She attributes her success to extraordinary observation and the spiritual electricity of connecting; freeing inhibition is her strength. And her secret? Looking at the world through a rose-colored lens~it never fails!
Keli Hoskins
Keli Hoskins is a self-taught “life photographer” residing in sunny South Carolina with her husband and three kids. She spends her days listening to the sound of laughter and tears and arguments and whispered secrets and silly giggles while surrounding herself with bright colors and music and books and coffee. She captures it all as a way to embrace her everyday life and give thanks for the little blessings that she doesn’t want to take for granted. Her photography is full of life and light and memories that her kids will treasure for always. When she’s not photographing or running, she blogs about her princess-and-dump-truck-filled life at Kidnapped by Suburbia
Angie Arthur
Angie Arthur is Co-Founder of I Heart Faces, professional photographer and former teacher living in Ohio who has been recognized by Parent Magazine as a top mom blogger for her website TheArthurClan.com. Angie is a busy wife, mom of four children, dog, cat and various farm animals that her children raise for their 4-H Club. The love of capturing her children in photos is what sparked her passion for photography. After many years of learning about her camera and working in various photography niches, she now specializes fusion photography for high school seniors, families and corporations. Angie is a natural teacher and can’t wait to meet the amazing women from the I Heart Faces community to share her knowledge and passion for photography with them.
Amy Locurto
Graphic design, photography, styling, social media, branding, blogging, crafting and stationery design are just a handful of the services that Amy Locurto can be caught working on. With 20 years in the design industry, she loves to do it all! Amy moved to Dallas from a small Oklahoma town and started her career as an Art Director for Fossil in the early ’90s, eventually opening her own design business, Atomic Egg, in 1999. Besides running a graphic design firm, Amy is co-founder of I Heart Faces and publishes Living Locurto, a top lifestyle blog focused on crafts and entertaining. She also designs whimsical party collections for purchase in her shop, Printables by Amy.
Amy’s love of technology and branding has helped her create several fantastic online communities. Living Locurto has become a top craft blog with millions of page views per month and I Heart Faces has grown to become one of the most thriving websites to inspire and teach women about photography. She’s happy to bring together many of these special women and creative entrepreneurs from the online community for a dream day at the I Heart Faces Photography Conference!
Past I Heart Faces Photography Conference Speakers
It was a dream of ours to host so many talented, creative entrepreneurs, bloggers, authors and photographers at the 2012 I Heart Faces Photography Conference! Our keynote speakers were especially inspiring to hear and we count them as dear friends after spending time with them in Dallas!
Sue Bryce
- Australian Portrait Photographer of the year 2011
- New Zealand O/S Photographer of the year 2011
Sue Bryce has been a Portrait Photographer for 22 years and has spent her career shooting Glamour. When all others turned their backs on this old style genre Sue evolved it, modernized it and then built a beautiful business out of it. From humble beginnings building her own boutique Studio in her country garage in 2003 to creating her successful high volume inner city Studio & Make up room a year later. Sue redefined Glamour Photography. A strong believer in the Business of Photography, modern marketing concepts and mad posing skills have taken Sue abroad these last 2 years Educating Photographers Internationally.
Kelle Hampton
Kelle Hampton is an incredible story teller. Kelle’s new book, Bloom, became a New York Times Bestseller in its first week of publication! She will inspire you with her story and how photography has made a huge difference in her life.
Photographer and New York Times Bestselling author, Kelle Hampton chronicles the simple joys of motherhood and daily life on her popular blog, Enjoying the Small Things. She has been recognized as a Babble Top 50 Mom Blogger, and her blog was named The Best Special Needs Blog by The Bump and The Blog You’ve Learned the Most From in the 2010 BlogLuxe Awards. Kelle lives in Naples, Florida, with her husband, Brett; their two daughters, Lainey and Nella; and her stepsons, Austyn and Brandyn. Her memoir, Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected was published April 3, 2012 by William Morrow/HarperCollins.
