Our Team
Every person on our team brings something essential — deep expertise, local knowledge or a teaching philosophy that pushes participants to see and photograph more intentionally.
Joe Newman - Director
Joe is a DC-based photographer and writer. Since leading his first travel photography workshop to Cuba in 2016, he has organized more than a dozen travel photography workshops to Vietnam and Cuba, founded the Focus on the Story International Photo Festival (2018-2021), edited three collaborative photo books published through successful Kickstarter campaigns, curated several photography exhibitions in D.C., and helped launch the iWitness Institute for Visual Journalism at Florida International University.
Thu Lê Hoài - Hanoi Field Producer
Thu is a professional photo and video producer and lifelong Hanoi resident who serves as the local backbone of every X-Pedition Hanoi workshop. As a seasoned fixer and someone who knows northern Vietnam intimately, she brings the kind of on-the-ground access and problem-solving that no amount of advance planning can replicate — if she can't find it or arrange it, she knows someone who can.
Ibarionex Perello -Workshop Leader
Ibarionex is a photographer, educator, and host of The Candid Frame — one of the most respected photography podcasts in the world, with more than 650 episodes. He has written six photography books, taught workshops across the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Japan, and served as an adjunct professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. His teaching centers on a simple but demanding idea: that the strongest photographs come from observation, connection, and intention — not from gear or location.