Whether you’re just starting out, or you’re a seasoned professional, every photographer needs a community.
Speakers: Rhynna M. Santos Amy Scott Ariel Zambelich
Moderators: Salgu Wissmath
Location: Online
Presented by:
Supported by:
Whether you’re just starting out, or you’re a seasoned professional, every photographer needs a community. A lively discussion with founders and leaders of Authority Collective, Bronx Women’s Photo Collective, and Queer The Lens Collective will cover the ins and outs of when, why, and how to create your photography collective.
Crafting Your Career is a web series to create pathways for freelancing visual storytellers to become successful in the photography industry. With workshops that talk about the art of the side hustle, creating collectives, and understanding contracts, these discussions and presentations from all-star and up-and-coming photographers are designed to guide members of our photographic community towards growth and success in their careers.
The workshops are especially geared towards BIPOC photographers, and are open to photographers anywhere in the world. We are here to support BIPOC and non-Western photographers to have successful careers.
Rhynna M. Santos is a Puerto Rico-born documentary photographer and teaching artist living and working in the Bronx. Ms. Santos’ art captures the beautiful, painful, funny, and endlessly complex lives and perspectives of people of color in her community.
In 2022 Ms. Santos’ work, “Reflections on Indigeneity in the Bronx,” was featured in the Photoville photography festival. Her exhibition #papielmaestro, a documentary exploration of the life of her father, jazz great, Ray Santos, was profiled by the New York Times in 2018. Later that same year, Santos was chosen as an En Foco Fellow and her work exploring the lives of Latina Muslims was exhibited at Andrew Freedman Home and featured in Nueva Luz Photographic Journal. She has also been featured in the New York Times, Race Related Instagram feed, for her project on BIPOC Star Wars fans, “Fandom, Race and the Force.” Additionally in 2018, she was recognized as a Lit List finalist by the Authority Collective. Her work has been featured in Jerome Avenue Workers Project 2015, Living Latina 2016, Photoville 2018 and Bronx Now 2018.
Santos is the founder of the Bronx Women’s Photo Collective and curator for the Instagram feed Everyday Bronx.
Amy Scott (they/them) is a queer and nonbinary commercial and advertising photographer who specializes in food, lifestyle, and agricultural storytelling.
They make images of food, the people who grow it, those who enjoy it, and its journey from the field to the table. Having been a small-scale vegetable farmer, their love affair with food is rooted in the love and admiration for those who work so hard to produce it. Whether in the studio or in the field, they strive for imagery that is vibrant, full of life, and that feels personal and tangible.
Real-world beauty, accessibility, and playfulness are the cornerstones of their work.
Amy is one of the co-founders of Queer the Lens, a growing community of
LGBTQIA+ creatives in photography and video, both on and off set. The QTL mission is to empower the creative queer community by establishing an inclusive space where we can voice our needs, create connections, and share resources.
Ariel Zambelich is a photojournalist and the Visuals Director at the Baltimore Banner, a local nonprofit news organization where she collaborates to tell stories through photojournalism, illustration, and design. A Los Angeles native, she graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism. She attended the Eddie Adams Workshop in 2008, was nominated for World Press Photo’s Joop Swart Masterclass in 2009, and attended the Kalish Workshop for photo editing in 2012.
Her photography clients include the New York Times + NY Times Magazine, Huck Magazine (UK), WIRED + WIRED Japan, Bloomberg Businessweek, the Nobel Foundation, the Atlantic, NatureBridge, California Sunday Magazine, the Harvard Business Review, Etiqueta Negra, M le magazine du Monde, and The FADER. She has also done freelance editing work for the Matte agency, Buzzfeed News, Outside Magazine, and AARP.
She was most recently a Managing Photo Editor for the Wall Street Journal with a focus on Politics + National News. Previously she was the Senior Photo Editor for The Intercept, the Supervising Editor of Photography + Art Director for NPR Visuals, and a photo editor for WIRED. She spent several years co-directing a documentary photography gallery in San Francisco. She also co-edited Pictures on the Radio, a book featuring the work of the late photojournalist David P. Gilkey.
She is a board member with the Authority Collective, and a general member of Diversify.Photo, organizations that focus on amplifying the voices of female-identifying and minority photographers + visual journalists. She is also on the Organizing Committee for the Freelance Solidarity Project, a union for freelance media workers, and a member of the 2019 Cohort of ONA’s Women’s Leadership Accelerator.
Salgu Wissmath (they/them/theirs) is a nonbinary Korean American freelance photographer based in San Antonio, TX and Sacramento, CA. Their personal work explores the intersections of mental health, queer identity, and faith from a conceptual documentary approach. They were previously a Hearst Photo Fellow at San Antonio Express-News and the San Francisco Chronicle. Salgu was recognized as AAJA’s 2022 Emerging Journalist of the Year and received the 2023 Curve Award for Emerging Journalists. They are a 2024 Lauren Brown Fellow, 2022 IWMF Gwen Ifill Fellow, a 2021 California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellow, and a recipient of a 2021 Puffin Foundation Grant and 2025 San Antonio Artist Grant. Their work has been published in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Texas Tribune, CalMatters, San Antonio Magazine, among others. Salgu is the Communications Director for Diversify Photo and a member of the Asian American Journalists Association, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, Trans Journalists Association, Women Photograph, and Authority Collective.
Diversify Photo is a community of BIPOC and non-Western photographers, editors, and visual producers working to break with the predominantly colonial and patriarchal eye through which history and the media have recorded the images of our time.
Founded in 2011 in Brooklyn, NY, Photoville was built on the principles of addressing cultural equity and inclusion, which we are always striving for, by ensuring that the artists we exhibit are diverse in gender, class, and race.
In pursuit of its mission, Photoville produces an annual, city-wide open air photography festival in New York City, a wide range of free educational community initiatives, and a nationwide program of public art exhibitions.
By activating public spaces, amplifying visual storytellers, and creating unique and highly innovative exhibition and programming environments, we join the cause of nurturing a new lens of representation.
Through creative partnerships with festivals, city agencies, and other nonprofit organizations, Photoville offers visual storytellers, educators, and students financial support, mentorship, and promotional & production resources, on a range of exhibition opportunities.
For more information about Photoville visit, www.photoville.com
This website was made possible thanks to the generous support and partnership of 