Carolyn Cole, Staff Photographer
Los Angeles Times

Carolyn Cole is a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times, where she has spent 15 years covering national and international news. Cole has won four World Press Photo Awards. Her coverage of the civil crisis in Liberia won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. She was Pulitzer finalist in 2005 for her coverage of the Gaza settlements closure. Cole is a two-time winner of the Robert Capa Courage In Photojournalism Award for her work in Iraq and Liberia (2004) and for her photographs of the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem (2003).

Her combined work from Liberia and Iraq also earned her the title of newspaper photographer of the year from both the University of Missouri Pictures of the Year competition (2004), and the National Press Photographers Association Best of Photojournalism (2004). In 2007 Cole was named Photojournalist of the Year in the NPPA's Best of Photojournalism competition. Cole is currently based in New York.

Penny De Los Santos
Independent Photographer

Penny De Los Santos is an award-winning documentary photographer known for her sensitive and evocative photo essays, food, travel and landscape photography.

She has spent the past seven years photographing the Latino movement in the United States, an essay inspired by her family background on the Texas-Mexico border. This work was featured in National Geographic in the winter of 2006.

De Los Santos's career launched when she was selected for the National Geographic Photography internship and in 1998 was named College Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers' Association. In 2000 she was selected for the prestigious World Press Master Class in Amsterdam. She has been a featured speaker at industry workshops and universities worldwide.

She is based in Austin, Texas. Her clients include Saveur Magazine, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Time, Latina and Texas Monthly.

Dennis Dimick, Executive Editor (Environment)
National Geographic

Dennis Dimick is the executive editor for environment at National Geographic Magazine.

He has a been a photo editor specializing in environment coverage since 1990. He has photo edited a dozen NGS books, including a 1996 book on the Endangered Species Act called The Company We Keep.

A September 2004 magazine project he proposed and oversaw on global climate change called Signs From Earth received a citation from the Overseas Press Club in 2007 for best enviromental coverage, and has been nominated by the Society of Environmental Journalists for best explanatory journalism. National Geographic stories he led that were published in June and October 2007 on melting ice, earth's carbon challenge, and prospects for biofuels received first place in the 2008 SEJ contest for best explanatory journalism.

Dimick lectures nationally on the emerging conflicts between energy use and climate change, and he co-organizes the annual Aspen Environment Forum with the Aspen Institute. He holds degrees in agriculture and agricultural journalism from Oregon State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

John Isaac
Independent Photographer

As a United Nations Photographer from 1978 to 1998, John Isaac covered everything from the Cambodian killing fields of Pol Pot and the famine in Ethopia to wars in Kuwait, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. John now loves to train his lens on things of beauty: the wondrous and colorful varieties of people, places and wildlife.

No stranger to the exotic, John has traveled the globe for his U.N. assignments and his work not only has captured a cornucopia of cultural diversity, his sensitive and compassionate nature was ever-present when recording the human condition on film for the world to see. There were times when he gave up a possible Pulitzer-winning photograph out of respect for the dignity and privacy of the potential subject.

Kim Komenich, Assistant Professor
San Jose State University

Kim Komenich graduated from San Jose State University in 1979 with a B.A. in Journalism. He was a 1993-94 Knight Fellow at Stanford University. He also received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Philippine revolution, the 1983 World Press Photo award for news picture stories, and the 1987 SPJ national distinguished service award.

Komenich has photographed the ramifications of conflict in the Philippines, Vietnam, Guyana, El Salvador, the former Soviet Union and most recently in Iraq, where photos from his three trips to the Sunni Triangle in 2005 earned him the Military Reporters and Editors' Association's 2006 Photography Award.

He is a 2005 recipient of the Clifton C. Edom Education Award from the National Press Photographers' Association and was a 1993-94 John S.Knight Fellow at Stanford. He was a 2006-07 Dart Ochberg Fellow at the University of Washington's Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

In 2007 he received his MA in Journalism from the University of Missouri, where he studied the history and practice of multimedia photojournalism.

George Olson
Independent Photographer and Editor

George Olson is the former Director of Photography for Sunset magazine. During a 20-year freelance career before coming to Sunset, he shot for many publications, including National Geographic, TIME, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times, and had many corporate clients.

He was a picture editor on multiple books produced by the Day in the Life staff. He was Director of Photography for the book Baseball in America and he edited the Las Vegas book Planet Vegas. He is now a freelance picture editor and portfolio consultant based in San Francisco.

Rick Shaw, Director Photographer of the Year International
University of Missouri

Rick Shaw is director of Pictures of the Year International (POYi), an international photojournalism competition and archive sponsored by the Missouri School of Journalism and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. He joined the journalism school in 2004 as an assistant professor in the photojournalism sequence and director of photography for the Columbia Missourian, the faculty-run, student-staffed daily city newspaper.

Shaw's prior newspaper career spans 27 years in visual editing and management. He began as a photojournalist and moved into picture editing, working at a variety of newspapers including the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and then The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee for 12 years. At The Bee, Shaw served in a variety of positions including photo editor, assistant director of photography, and later as an assistant news editor. He then became the director of photography and graphics at The Arizona Republic in Phoenix, and in 2001 joined the Hartford (Conn.) Courant as its director of design and graphics.

Shaw has been recognized with several design and picture editing awards, including Picture Editor of the Year honors in Pictures of the Year International (POYi) and National Press Photographers Association competitions. The Sacramento Bee and Hartford Courant both have received the Angus McDougall Overall Excellence in Editing Award.

At Missouri, Shaw directed the student photo editing staff to an Award of Excellence in overall portfolio during the 63rd POYi competition in 2006.

Maggie Steber
Independent Photographer

Born and raised in Texas, documentary photographer Maggie Steber has lived and worked all over the world. Early in her career she worked as a reporter and photographer for the Galveston Daily News and as a picture editor for the Associated Press in New York.

Steber's photos have appeared in magazines around the world, including Life, the New Yorker, Smithsonian, People, Newsweek, Time, and Sports Illustrated as well as Merian Magazine of Germany, and The Times Magazine of London, among others.

Her work in Haiti won Steber two major grants (the Ernst Haas Grant and the Alicia Patterson Foundation Grant for Journalistic Exploration of a Subject) and culminated in 1991 in the publication of a book, Dancing on Fire: Photographs From Haiti. Steber has also won the World Press Foundation Award, the Leica Medal of Excellence, an Overseas Press Club honor, and Pictures of the Year awards. She has served as a judge for many photo competitions, including the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Pictures of the Year competition.

Steber's work for National Geographic has included articles on Miami, the African slave trade, the Cherokee Nation, soldiers' letters, and Dubai. Steber currently lives in Miami, Florida.