Meet our Judges
Beth Mancuso
Category: Macro
Beth is a Minnesota-based portrait and landscape photographer. Beth ran a successful portrait business for over ten years. In that time she photographed countless families and seniors. Beth's portrait work has been featured by Click Magazine, Black and White Mag, My Modern Met, Lensbaby, and more. In 2019, Beth closed her portrait business to focus on her passion for teaching and empowering female photographers.
Now Beth is living her dream of traveling and teaching photography. In 2020 she was on the National Geographic Channel on the show Assignment Inspiration. In 2025 she was awarded Sony Alpha Female Creator of the Year. Her landscape work has been featured by National Geographic, ABC News, Sony, Tokina, Outdoor Photographer, Tamron, Midwest Living, Minnesota Monthly, and more. Beth is the founder of Women's Photography Circle, a community of over 20,000 women photographers.
Regina Boston
Category: Macro
“Into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.” ~ John Muir
Regina Boston of RMB Photography is a fine art nature and macro photographer from Maryland. She is a wife, mother of 7 children, 3 grandchildren, and 1 furbaby. She truly enjoys capturing subjects as they are, helping people notice the small, beautiful details in the world around us. She has a huge passion of shooting extraordinary with Lensbaby lenses, allowing her the opportunity to express herself visually and emotionally through creative art achieved in camera. Regina is a published artist, a Click Pro Elite, and a Women’s Photography Circle Moderator for Maryland.
Cathy Alice
Category: Macro
Cathy Kuhlman is a self taught photographer who loves pushing the limits of light and focus. You’ll find her using nature as her subject, from the smallest details in her macro work through to the largest landscapes and everything in between. She loves finding ways to infuse light and emotion into her work as a way to express how she sees the world. She is a Click Pro Elite photographer and a Lensbaby Trailblazer. Cathy enjoys sharing her love of blur in her work through in-person classes and some online workshops! Cathy also writes informational blogs for Lensbaby.
When Cathy doesn’t have a camera in her hands she enjoys traveling with her husband, spending time with her children and grandchildren, as well as taking long walks, gardening and reading. Before retiring, Cathy worked in Special Education in her local school system.
Amy Ames
Category: Wildlife
Amy Ames is a wildlife, landscape, and adventure photographer based in Pittsboro, North Carolina. With a deep love for remote, rugged environments, she spends much of her time exploring wild places—from snow-covered peaks to coastal shorelines. She strives to capture both the quiet intensity of wildlife and the expansive beauty of natural landscapes, and feels most at home in cold climates and mountain terrain. When not traveling or leading workshops, she continues to hone her craft through personal projects and time in the field.
Amy’s work is driven by a love for wild places and a passion for sharing their stories through photography. She hopes her images inspire others to slow down, look closer, and care more deeply about the natural world. Whether leading in-the-field workshops or teaching online, she loves helping people connect with nature in a more meaningful way. She also teaches a wildlife photography course through Women’s Photography Circle, where she supports fellow photographers in growing both their skills and their sense of wonder.
Kristia Adams
Category: Wildlife
Kristia is a nature and landscape photographer living in New Jersey. She has been shooting since her high school years but has been shooting seriously for nearly 15 years. Growing up in the pine barrens of New Jersey has instilled in me a love of nature and the woods.
Most weekends you can find Kristia out in the woods searching for new places to photograph or exhibiting in one of the many local art shows in her area.
Amber Favorite
Category: Wildlife
Amber Favorite is a Central Florida-based photographer with a deep-rooted love for the outdoors and a gift for visual storytelling. Through stunning photography and cinematic videography, Amber captures the quiet drama, wild beauty, and fleeting magic of the natural world. To her, the experience always comes first -- the stillness, the adrenaline, the connection. The photograph is the gift left behind. Her passion goes beyond the lens. Amber is a dedicated mentor who thrives on helping beginners find their footing and their creative voice.
Whether she’s out in the field or teaching others, she leads with curiosity, compassion, and a contagious sense of wonder. Amber’s work has been featured in multiple publications and campaigns, a reflection of her unwavering commitment to honoring wildlife in its raw, untamed truth. Specializing in nature, wildlife, and landscape photography, she blends technical skill with artistic vision while crafting images that celebrate nature’s quiet strength and wild poetry. Follow her journey and behind-the-scenes adventures on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.
Sarah Gupta
Category: Portraits
Sarah lives in Rochester, Minnesota with her husband, son, and a few beloved furry friends.
A natural light photographer, she is known for using the interplay of dark and light to create depth and emotion in her work. Drawn to environmental portraiture, lifestyle imagery, fine art, and nature, Sarah thoughtfully layers color and tone to achieve soft, seamless transitions that give her photographs a painterly quality.
Inspired by the luminous light favored by painters of the Golden Age, she approaches photography with an artist’s eye — a passion that first began with painting and drawing and later found its fullest expression through the camera.
Sarah currently serves as an instructor with Women’s Photography Circle, where she leads a four-week workshop titled The Unseen World: Exploring Macro Photography, guiding photographers to discover beauty in the smallest details.
Whitney Minten
Category: Portraits
Whitney Minten is a Master Photographer, educator, and visual storyteller based in Wisconsin. With a background that uniquely blends art and science, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Biology with a Physics minor from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a Master’s degree in Computer Science and Robotics from the University of South Florida. Before fully transitioning into the arts, Whitney spent over a decade working in engineering and robotics — an experience that still influences how she approaches light, problem-solving, and image construction today.
Whitney is an award-winning portrait artist known for her conceptual children’s portraiture, painterly fine-art work, and technically complex composites. Her imagery often combines multi-light setups, controlled color theory, and meticulous post-production to create images that are both emotionally engaging and technically precise. She is especially passionate about teaching photographers how light behaves, helping artists understand not just what to do, but why it works.
Within the professional photography community, Whitney is actively involved in photographic competition and education. She regularly prepares and exhibits work in international print competition and participates in critique-driven judging and image evaluation. In addition to creating her own artwork, she mentors photographers, teaches Photoshop and lighting, and writes educational material on the science of photography and exposure.
Whitney also works behind the scenes in the industry as a web developer and designer liaison for Baby Dream Backdrops. Outside of her commercial work, she mentors and educates photographers independently through workshops, classes, and community involvement, focusing on intentional lighting, visual problem-solving, and image design.
As a judge, Whitney evaluates images based on impact, storytelling, technical execution, and intentional use of light. She believes competition should both challenge and encourage artists, and she strives to provide critiques that are constructive, specific, and educational so photographers leave not only with a score, but with a clear path for growth.
Amy Santos
Category: Portraits
Amy loves capturing the moments, milestones, and everyday joys that make life meaningful. Whether celebrating a senior year, a growing family, or a once-in-a-lifetime event, her goal is to create images that tell each client’s unique story. With over eight years of experience behind the lens, she thoughtfully guides each session with a calm, confident presence that helps clients feel natural and at ease. Her editing process is intentional and refined — carefully enhancing color, light, and detail to create polished, cohesive images that feel authentic while maintaining a timeless quality families will cherish for years to come.
By day, she is a full-time teacher, and photography allows her to express her creativity in a different way — preserving memories that families can cherish for a lifetime. For Amy, each session is more than just taking photos; it’s about telling a story, capturing genuine connections, and celebrating the moments that matter most.
Lindsey Englar
Category: Landscapes
Lindsey is a Minnesota-based photographer who started her photography journey as a teenager. Over the years, this hobby became a passion and has slowly developed into a part-time business. She has done commercial photography shoots for small businesses in the Twin Cities and Southwest MN regions. She has been published in Landscape Photography Magazine as a finalist for several of their monthly assignments and is currently working with an architectural and design company to have her work featured in a new commercial building.
Lindsey joined Women's Photography Circle almost 4 years ago and has enjoyed the opportunities this group has created to develop connections throughout Minnesota and the United States including becoming and instructor for Into The Wild We Go women's photography workshops. In her free time she loves paddle boarding, hiking, working out, running, and sketching. Her kindle travels with her wherever she goes because one never knows when the perfect spot will be discovered for reading and a snack with epic views. For her day job, she helps people improve how to move their bodies and teaches them how to lift heavy things. She has also written articles for Matador Network and is a collector of degrees from various Midwest universities.
Jen Falkofske
Category: Landscapes
Jen is a Midwest-based (Wisconsin & Minnesota) photographer with a love for sunrises, sunsets, waterfalls, landscapes, and the night sky. Her work has been featured by KARE11 news, Minnesota Freshwater Society, and Our Wisconsin Magazine.
Jen is on of the moderators for the Wisconsin Women Photographers group, and organizes many meet-ups for the group. She is also and instructor for Into The Wild We Go women's photography workshops.
Danielle Austen
Category: Landscapes
Danielle Austen has been an award-winning professional photographer for over 25 years. Her career has spanned from graphic designer to photojournalist to her current role as a fine art photographer. Her work has been featured in various local, regional, and national publications and has been showcased in over four dozen national and international juried exhibitions, as well as numerous group and solo exhibitions. She was a finalist recipient for the 2025 Individual Artist Award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Danielle joined the Women's Photography Circle Group in 2023 and presented her talk on her experiences as an Artist-In-Residence within multiple National Parks which included Shenandoah, Rocky Mountain, Great Smoky Mountains, twice at Acadia, and the Everglades. She was also a Full Fellow recipient at the Vermont Studio Center.
Her teachings revolve around the "Art of Seeing,' a way of looking that challenges us to move past the surface, stretch our creative vision, and discover the deeper layers within a scene that reveal the subtle beauty that often goes unnoticed.
"Photography feeds our souls. I believe one of the greatest gifts of being a photographer is that we get to see more of the world, because we never stop looking."
