I Heart Faces Creative Team

Jean Smith

Jean Smith is an on location photographer living in New Hudson, Michigan with her husband and four little boys. Jean’s husband is also a full time photographer and they feel blessed beyond words to do work that they both love. With separate photography businesses, the husband wife team works together on workshops, weddings, and commercial projects. Jean loves all “genres” of people and therefore photographs them all…babies, kids, high school seniors, models, and couples. She likes to consider herself a natural light photographer, but is madly love incorporating off camera flash into her work as well.

Jean considers 2006 to be her official “jump” into photography. In early 2006, she and her husband had the opportunity to move to China for a short while. Travis (the hubby) suggested they get a decent SLR camera, and her love affair was born. Jean says she lived, ate, and breathed photography while she was in China, practicing in every situation available. When they came back to the states, she immediately started portfolio building and officially opened her business in the summer of 2007.

Website: Jean Smith Photography
Blog: Jean Smith Photography Blog
Facebook: Jean Smith Photography

Susan Keller

Susan Keller is a lifestyle photographer based in Southern California. Susan has loved photography for as long as she can remember. The only things that kept her from taking thousands of images during her college years and her babies’ earliest days was the price of film & cost of developing. Now freed from those constraints, she has poured considerable time and effort and equipment cost into honing her favorite “craft.” In 2008, she began pulling together her portfolio and has developed a great business from her hobby.
Susan’s style is very unique, real and in the moment. We are happy to have known Susan for a long time and to have her teaching so many people here with a passion for photography! You can follow along her journey on her blog, Short on Words.

Website: Susan Keller Photography
Blog: Short on Words
Facebook: Susan Keller Photography

Amandalynn Jones

A commercial and portrait photographer, Amandalynn Jones loves faces. Starting at age 13, she has been drawing, painting, sculpting, molding, and photographing faces for 15 years. Her clean and vivid semi-candid style allows her to capture alluring moments that reveal genuine portraits of her subjects, and her creative storytelling engages viewers of her commercial and editorial work. Her work has been featured in books, magazines, ad campaigns, and on living room walls across the world.
When she’s not running a full-time business catering to her clients’ desires Amandalynn spends time freely sharing with other photographers online as a long time Admin in the IHF Community. Although she doesn’t consider herself qualified to put “teacher” in her title after 7 short years in the business, she loves sharing her knowledge and experiences of success (and failure!) with other pros and photography enthusiasts.
Amandalynn lives in Middleton, Wisconsin with her geeky media-specialist husband, hilarious son, and their sweet (but possibly possessed) yellow lab puppy, Tusa.

Website: Amandalynn Jones Photography
Blog: Amandalynn Jones Photography Blog
Facebook: Amandalynn Jones Photography

Keli Hoskins

Keli Hoskins has always loved taking pictures, but it wasn’t until 2006 when she got her first DSLR that she really started getting interested in all of the ins and outs of photography. For a couple of years, she focused on the beauty around her but didn’t pay attention to technique or processing. After a baby step progression out of auto mode, she finally leaped into full manual mode in 2009.

Keli’s photography is full of life and love. We have been blessed to have Keli on the I Heart Faces Creative Team for a while now, her family is most definitely her main inspiration. The way she captures her daily life on camera is an inspiration to us all. Keli is a wife to her best friend and a mom to two beautiful daughters and one little boy due in June 2012. She is not a professional photographer with a registered name or website or business cards. At the end of the day, she says, “I’m just a mom with a camera trying to make our memories last a little bit longer.” When not behind the camera, you can find Keli blogging at Kidnapped by Suburbia. When she is behind the camera, you will find her holding a Canon 50D with either the super portable 50mm 1.8 or the bokeh-massaging 85mm 1.8.

Website: Kidnapped by Suburbia
Facebook: Kidnapped By Suburbia

Andrea Riley

Andrea Riley, a photographer and teacher from Ohio, has the distinct honor of being the first follower of I Heart Faces. She has been an enthusiastic cheerleader as she has watched the site blossom into an incredible resource for beginning to professional photographers.  Andrea has taught special education classes at the middle school level for fourteen years, and she loves to apply her teaching experience when writing tutorials, teaching at workshops, and interacting with other photographers in the I Heart Faces Community.

Andrea started her own photography business in 2011.  Her photography experience mixes well with her teaching career as she can often be found with Canon in hand capturing portraits of the Students of the Month, action shots at sporting events, and the chaos of pep rallies and Tailgate parties.  Photoshop Elements has become Andrea’s area of expertise. She also enjoys working in Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3. In December of 2010, Andrea received her Master’s of Education in Instructional Technology with an additional certification as a technology facilitator.  When not in the role of photographer or teacher, Andrea enjoy spending time with her husband and three children.  They love biking, boating, and playing with their new puppy.

Website: Andrea Riley Photography
Facebook: Andrea Riley Photography

Dana Suggs

Dana Suggs is a wife, mother and family photographer from Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Dana has been a member of the I Heart Faces team for many years inspiring thousands of women and making them laugh with her humorous photography tutorials. She started out as a painter and as her family grew, found less and less time to paint and sketch, but her artistic eye never stopped capturing the scene she wanted to paint. She soon moved to photography where she could have that almost-instant satisfaction of seeing what was in her minds’ eye, come to life. Instead of oil, Dana now uses Photoshop, instead of a brush, she uses her camera. Dana loves photos that evoke emotion and make you long for the story behind the photo. She has a passion for helping others and someday hopes of doing Missions photography.

Blog: From Chaos to Grace
Website: Portraits by Dana Suggs
Facebook: Dana’s Photography

Rachel Durik

Rachel Durik is wedding and portrait photographer based in Southwest Florida. She also writes great tutorials and teaches online Lightroom and Photoshop classes with us at I Heart Faces. Rachel got her first DSLR in February of 2008 and started her business the following November. (Rachel says she did it all the wrong way and to read this.)

Rachel says, “I’ll be honest: the reason I got into photography was so I could have beautiful pictures to post on my personal blog. Most photographers grew up with the love of photography in their blood, they played with their parents cameras, they were always creative with their point and shoots before upgrading to a DSLR. I was none of that. I was a crappy picture taker with my point and shoot. I made learning photography a project for me and insisted that I learn as much about my camera as I possibly could. I hit the books hard, and I still do. So I think maybe creativity is more inherent, but the technical aspects of photography can be learned!” But since then, she has only learned from her mistakes. Now Rachel has a thriving business, Savor Photography!

Besides teaching and working as a photographer, Rachel home schools her two children, and have a new baby on the way. You can read more about her on the Savor Photography blog.

Website: Savor Photography
Blog: Savor Photography Blog
Facebook: Savor Photography

 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 photographing sessions.

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.

Website: JellyBean Pictures
Blog: JellyBean Blog
Facebook: JellyBean Pictures