Brenda Acuncius
Bloom Founder and Forum Owner
Brenda lives in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area with her husband and three little ones (yes, she counts her pup as a child too). Her passion for photography began when her late father introduced her to a Pentax camera. As she married and had her first child, the passion was sparked again with a failed stint with scrapbooking. She has been shooting professionally for over 5 years and shoots with a Canon Mark ii and three prime lenses. In her free time she is co-President of her daughter’s elementary school and she loves all things design, chocolate, books and J.Crew.
Breeze Floyd
Coordinator of Site Operations
Breeze lives in Connecticut with her 3 children, Myra, and twins Chase and Aria. She specializes in custom children’s photography, as well as band promos/live music. In addition to her photography business, Breeze runs a web design business. She loves anything made by Apple and all things emo.
Gretchen Davis
Forum Leader
Gretchen is mother of three sweet boys, living out a short term adventure with her family in the pacific northwest as a transplant from the south. After 4 busy years of business focusing primarily on lifestyle family sessions, Gretchen is enjoying a slower paced business during her two year stint in Portland, OR. Taking the Bloom workshop in 2009 was a huge turning point as a photographer for Gretchen and loves being able to contribute to the Bloom community through the Bloom forum.
Hope Toliver
Social Media Coordinator
(photo courtesy of Lora Swinson – Swinson Studios | Shawnee Oklahoma)
Hope is a Tulsa, Oklahoma area hobbyist/part time photographer with a passion for photographing her girls mostly, but also high school seniors and families. She met her husband in college at the University of Oklahoma. Together, they have three beautiful girls (10 year old Mackenzie and 2.5 year twins Nia & Nala). While she has always enjoyed photography, her passion for the study of photography really began when she started a 365 project and took a Photography 101 in 2010. In 2011, after joining the Bloom Forum, she found personal projects including a 52 week challenge with fellow forum members, a 52 week project for her girls which included a Me and Mine project, and 10 on 10 projects which she accredits to her growth. She feels really blessed to have met several Bloomies in real life and is happy to have found some genuine friendships on the board and at our Face 2 Face in-person workshop.
Kristin Young
Forum Leader and Film Mentor
(photo courtesy of Deb Schwedhelm)
Kristin lives in Gainesville, Fl with her college sweetheart husband and five children. Growing up overseas and being an avid traveler ignited the passion for photography but it was really after the birth of her first child that the spark became a full-blown inferno. Kristin works part-time in her photography business but full-time on personal projects and ideas with a passion for travel and documentary photography. She currently is going back to her roots in film photography. Kristin participated in the Bloom workshop and loves all things Bloom as well as enjoys contributing to the forum.
Rebecca Conway
AIR and Film Coordinator and Mentor
Rebecca makes her home in East TN with her husband and two daughters, whom you will often find in front of her camera. She has a longtime passion for creating and found her way back into photography once her children were born. After several years of digital photography, Rebecca has found that shooting film has given her the freedom to find her voice and create the kind of images that speak to her heart. Outside of photography she enjoys interior design, dabbling in most domestic arts and spending time with her family. She is happy to give back to the Bloom community as she feels it opened the door for her and introduced her to many of her now closest colleagues and friends.
Sara Tegman
Contest/Challenge Coordinator | Visual Production Specialist
Sara loves to capture families, children, teens, newborns, moms-to-be and graduating seniors. She hails from the heartland out of St. Louis, Missouri. She adores Brenda and finished the Bloom Workshop in February of ’09. And the rest, they say, is history.
Shannon Harrison
Creative Director | Vendor Relations
Shannon resides with her husband and three small children near San Diego, CA. Photography pulled her heart strings starting in junior high with instant cameras and mountains of disposables. Pulling from her college journalism courses, Shannon finds photographing the simple slices of everyday life to be the most rewarding and credits her participation in the Bloom Workshop for giving her the courage to do so. She shares her love of writing here on the Everything Bloom blog and is also a proud contributing writer at The Creative Mama.
Stephanie Moore
Forum Project Manager
(photo courtesy of Aubry Startin)
Stephanie has been married for 10 years to her best friend and has two children that keep her on her toes! She is from Phoenix AZ and now resides in the Tucson area. She has always loved photography, but decided she had to learn all about it after having kids and wanting to take better pictures of them. Before she knew it, her hobby was turning into a business and she has never looked back. She loves using her camera as a way to capture real interactions and emotions between people.
Wendy VonSosen
Creative Manager
Wendy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and loves to photograph high school seniors, newborns, and children. She is the mom of four and has been married to her high school prom date for the last 19 years. Her passion for photography took root in her freshman high school photography class and has grown ever since. When not photographing clients, she is working on one of (too) many personal photography projects she has foolishly taken on, chipping away at the pile of books by her bed, shuttling kids to three different schools, or dreaming up the next home improvement project from Pinterest.
Alpana Aras-King
Bloom Forum Contributor
Amy Grace
Bloom Forum Contributor
Amy is a mother before everything else. but everything else makes her the mother she is. Her kids inspire her to be attentive, to try to capture the insides of a person in a photograph, to make others comfortable, to be as kind as she can be, as brave, as open to the world. She is a writer first, and a musician, but she thinks these things have helped her to see, to be a better emotive photographer because they have taught her to start with a feeling. Her favorite images, favorite moments, favorite people – are all about love. Photography came into her life almost two years ago. She dreamed of taking pictures of so many wild and wonderful things, and she will one day, though right now, her babies are the center of the universe. Kids are her favorite thing to photograph, because they are raw and real and bring out the best in her. On a perfect day, you would find her playing the piano for a long time, singing with her kids, reading together, being outside, getting ready for a dinner with the whole family, and packing for the airport later that night, everyone wild and loud and happy around her.
Aubri Graybeal
Bloom Forum Contributor
(photo courtesy of Mishelle Lamarand Photography)
Aubri is on a personal quest to create world peace through color, laughter, and pretty light….one picture at a time. Her super powers include making obnoxious animal noises, climbing on unstable objects in the name of the perfect angle, and twisting into a pretzel shape when necessary. While she is not saving the world she is hiding in Southwest Florida with her partner in Crime (aka the hubby) and her delicious four year old daughter (aka the diva). Besides photography, she is passionate about healthy living, teaching, and all things vintage.
Cara Harrison
Bloom Forum Contributor
Cara is a wife and mom to three young children (two boys and a girl.) She lives in the Greater Cincinnati area, but on the “friendly” side of the river (Northern Kentucky.) When she isn’t busy with church, playgroups, or kids’ sports, she runs a custom child and family photography business. This year, Cara is also participating in a 365 project, with the goal of creatively capturing a full year of her childrens’ lives.
Ginger Unzueta
Bloom Forum Contributor
Ginger Unzueta is a natural light, lifestyle photographer living in Central Florida. She is a mother, a wife, a daughter and a friend. She is a lover and seeker of light and she longs to capture the love and connections of the people she is with. She wants to capture the stories of today to be retold tomorrow. She yearns to capture the beauty of the imperfect and the details of everything around her. She strives to find her way to give back to this world; for she feels she has been blessed in immeasurable ways. She looks for God’s direction in all of this, with hopes to fulfill His purpose for her life.
Hannah Mayo
Bloom Forum Contributor
(photo courtesy of Rebekah Hood of Kallima Photography)
Hannah is a mother of two boys, and married to her best friend. She is a portrait and wedding photographer in Palm Beach, Florida, and is passionate about capturing the love in peoples lives and expressing who they are in an authentic and artful style. Her love for photography took root when she was 16 on a trip to London, and she shot her first paid job at 19. She shoots a combination of digital and film, and loves experimenting with vintage cameras and alternate processes and shooting personal work. She is constantly learning and evolving as both an artist and business owner. Hannah also enjoys going on adventures with her family, writing, being by the ocean, reading, travel, coffee shops, running, and shopping thrift and antique stores.
Heather Robinson
Bloom Forum Contributor
Heather is a hobbyist who loves capturing the magical light that surrounds her two small children. She resides in Durham, North Carolina with her children and husband. As a child, she loved pulling all of the family photo albums off the shelf and getting lost in the memories, trying to relive a certain moment from the past, feel a specific emotion, smell a scent that faded long ago, feel closer to a loved one. She is passionate about creating a legacy to leave behind for her children. They inspire her to pick up her camera everyday to document these fleeting moments together.
Jayme Franklin
Bloom Forum Contributor
(photo courtesy of Storybox Art)
Jayme is thirty-something California girl living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She loves dark chocolate at any time of day, and likes to go running to save her sanity and to find her happy place. She is a wife and a mother to two little blondies, who are often her inspiration when she looks through her camera. As a natural light photographer, she loves to photograph people being real, being themselves, and being together. Her style of photography is full of light and is a fun mix of modern and lifestyle portraiture, that aims to reflect the true personalities and relationships between families, couples, and children. This past year, she has challenged her self and found creative inspiration in shooting 100% film for all of her personal work.
Jenny Cruger
Bloom Forum Contributor
Jenny Cruger finds her own life & style often intertwined with her business with a concentration on raw emotional, natural themes, lovely textures, neutral colors, and beautiful light. She shoots newborns, babies, and bellies in her soft natural light studio in historic Franklin, TN and families, children, and weddings on location, generally in some random, weed filled location at sunset. Shooting a mix of film and digital, for over 10 years, Jenny enjoys creating not only for her clients, but her own soul and they are often one and the same. Jenny lives just South of Nashville, TN with her husband, child, 3 dogs, and horse, but is originally from Michigan.
Jules Trandem
Bloom Forum Contributor
Jules is San Diego photographer specializing in children, families and high school seniors. This past year was especially meaningful to Jules as she challenged her creativity with many personal projects … Fifty-Two on Friday, Just Us Twelve Times, What ____ Looks Like (a lifestyle journey), and finally {elevate} A Fine Art Challenge. She feels so blessed to be a part of the Bloom family!
Kelsey Gerhard
Bloom Forum Contributor
Kelsey lives in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC with her archaeologist husband, their two spirited daughters, Luella and Willa, and their rescued puppy. She met her husband as an undergraduate at UCSB, has an MFA in Photography from CalArts in Los Angeles, and wishes California was just a simple road trip away from DC. Her first love is creating art out of her every day – her own personal narrative – usually as told through her children. She is a proud co-founder of the project You Are My Wild, and feels lucky to also be in business taking lifestyle portraits of sweet children and their families. She is a camera hoarder who loves both film and digital, a swimmer, a (nearly) lifelong vegetarian, and a chronic instagrammer. She truly values the connections and friends that she has made through Bloom!
Lucy Crafter
Bloom Forum Contributor
Lucy is a lover of all things pretty, and sparkly, can’t ever forget sparkly! While she is one of those people who say she has been around photography since she can remember, she actually have her step mum to thank because of that. Without her, and her half brother and sister being born, she would never have found herself as addicted to this career and lifestyle as she has. As well as running her wedding and family photography business, she is also a full time university student, trying to battle the balance between study, work, her family, and her relationship. But it’s the drive in the end to push herself toward success in both business and study, and everything in between that gets her to work harder every single day! She keep thinking that while she started her business while she was in my final years of high school (gosh she was still 17, thats scary in itself), that each year would get easier as she started to learn how to balance between all these things, but it seems, each year for the past 4 and a half years just gets harder, study load becomes more and the business takes off to a new level that she can’t believe. She cannot wait to contribute more to The Bloom Forum that has contributed so much to her since it opened. She may have gone insane during holiday seasons if it wasn’t for the amazing group of ladies on there!
Rachel May
Bloom Forum Contributor
Rachel is a wedding & portrait photographer from Virginia. When she’s not busy with photography, you will find her enjoying life with her handsome hubby of 9 years and their 3 incredible children. She is passionate about life, love, and truth. Her clients describe her as “sweet & spunky” with a fun demeanor & exceptional attention to detail. She strives to create natural & relaxed environments for her clients so that they are able to be themselves in front of the camera. She loves real, romantic moments that two people create when they interact. It is those moments that inspire her work.
Sarah Cambio
Bloom Forum Contributor
Sarah lives in Grand Forks, ND with her husband and two lively children. She started getting into photography when her daughter Olivia was born and her passion just took off from there. Her first ventures were babies and children, but has currently fell in love with maternity and boudoir. When she is not clicking away, Sarah can be found searching for antiques or finding new recipes to try in the kitchen.