Bambi Cantrell

World renowned wedding and portrait photographer, Bambi Cantrell, is one of the most decorated and celebrated professional photographers of our time. After 25 years of photographing some of the most exquisite and breathtaking wedding and portrait images from around the world, three best selling books entitled The Art of Wedding Photography, The Art of Digital Wedding Photography, and The Art of People Photography, and countless awards and accolades, Bambi Cantrell is virtually a household name.

Bambi is highly regarded in the photographic industry as the foremost expert on lighting and posing and spends a great deal of her time educating photographers from around the world on her unique style and techniques that have brought her fame and success. She is a member of both WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) and PPA (Professional Photographers of America), and is sponsored by some of the industry’s leading manufacturers of photographic equipment including Epson, Nikon, Bay Photo, and Album Epoca.

She has been honored with a number of awards including Double Master of Photography WPPI 2014, recipient of the Golden Eye award from the Russian Federation of Professional Photographers, named as “The most influential photographer of the decade" in 2011 by Photo Focus online magazine and named one of the “10 Best Wedding Photographers in the World” by American Photo magazine in 2007. Bambi was the first woman inducted into Microsoft’s elite “Icon of Imaging” program. She has also received a Lifetime Achievement award by WPPI and the IPC Leadership award.

Bambi is a guest speaker at dozens of workshops and conventions around the world every year including the annual WPPI Convention and Trade Show for the last 10 years, as well as such conventions as the Russian Federation of Professional Photographers, Professional Photographers of Australia, and PhotoPlus Expo in NYC. She has also been a print and album judge at the annual WPPI Print Competition, chairing the Album competition and Wedding print competition numerous years. Bambi is a guest lecturer at a number of photography schools around the country including the Center for Digital Imaging at Boston University, the Julia Dean School in Venice, CA, the Microsoft Summit and the Santa Fe Workshops. She has been a guest speaker for Creative Live the last three years. Bambi also hosts a number of her own workshops every year, typically offering at least 1 workshop per quarter to a limited number of attendees.

Bambi’s work has been featured in dozens of magazines including Martha Stewart Weddings, Rangefinder, Photo District News and Ebony as well as hundreds of blogs.     

Although Bambi spends a great deal of time on portrait photography, she also photographs 15 to 20 weddings per year for some of the world’s most extravagant couples. Based in the San Francisco Bay area, but available for work anywhere in the world—Bambi considers the key to her success a direct result of her love of people. “I just love people, and believe truly great photographs are a reflection of who the client is, not who I want them to be.”