Jay Dickman

As a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and National Geographic photographer,  Jay’s career has spanned a multitude of experiences, including three months living in a stone-age village in Papua New Guinea, a week under the Arctic ice in a nuclear attack sub (both these for National Geographic), and aboard a sinking boat on the Amazon.  With more than twenty-five assignments for the National Geographic Society, Jay has taught workshops for Santa Fe Workshops, the Maine Media Workshops, Photography at the Summit and American Photo Mentor Series. Jay and his wife, Becky, are founders of the FirstLight Workshop series, having hosted multiple workshops in Spain, Scotland, France, Italy, Namibia, Mongolia, the Chesapeake, and Wyoming.  FirstLight was noted in American Photo magazine as one of the top 12 photographic workshops.

Working with National Geographic Expeditions, Jay has been on more than 60 trips as the “National Geographic Expert.”  These have included several “Around the World by Private Jet”, “Central & South America by Private Jet,” “Africa by Private Jet,”trips to Svalbard and the High Arctic, Cape of Norway, British Isles, Northwest Passage, Dalmatian Coast, along with multiple trips to Baja, Galapagos, and Antarctica. Jay traveled to the West Coast of Africa and South Georgia, the Falklands and the Antarctic, and has led National Geographic Adventures, which include: “Walking with the Maasai,” “Tanzania Photo Adventure”, “Namibia Culture and Wildlife Adventure” “Sri Lanka Photo Expedition,” “Tuscany Photo Adventure,” and “Japan Photo Adventure.”  Working with National Geographic, Jay has also presented more than 15 lectures for the Society.

Jay was cited as one of  Travel + Leisure Magazine’s “Ten Fascinating People You Can Travel With in 2017”

As a working pro, Jay has been an Olympus Visionary since 2003, a Lexar “Elite” Photographer and a member of the Singh Ray group of professional photographers. He is co-author of the best-selling book, “Perfect Digital Photography”, published by McGraw-Hill.

Frank Varney

Frank Varney has been an active corporate location and advertising photographer, and collegiate level photography instructor for over 30 years, and currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Commercial Photography program at the Rocky Mountain College of Art+ Design. For 19 years he was the Photography Department Chair, at the Colorado Institute of Art.

Frank has worked as an assistant instructor for the three years of the National Geographic Expeditions Wyoming’s Cowboy Country Photography Workshops with Jay Dickman, in addition to multiple years as co-instructor with Jay Dickman’s FirstLight Workshops CM Ranch and Absaroka Ranch Workshops.  He also teaches workshops for the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC). Frank holds an MFA in Photography from Maine Media College, and a BA in Communication Arts from University of Denver.

His work has appeared in numerous publications, including AARP The Magazine, Der Spiegel, ELLE, Glamour, First for Women, Ladies Home Journal, and The New York Times, along with The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes (by Christopher James, Delmar Cengage Learning, 2008) and Photography for the 21^st Century (by Katie Miller, Delmar Cengage Learning, 2006).

His corporate clients include GE Service & Installation Division, Hewlett-Packard, Vari-L, Storage Technology, United Technologies Micro Electronics Division, Republic TeleCom, Array Systems, and Re/Max International.

Frank was the Technical Editor for Perfect Digital Photography 2^nd Edition (by Jay Dickman and Jay Kinghorn, McGraw-Hill 2009), and Review Editor for Creating the Breakthrough Portfolio (by Ken Thurlbeck, Cengage Learning, 2007).