For Lee Mandrell, photography began as a hobby that quickly ignited into a fiery passion and then into a lifelong career. He started out at age fourteen with a secondhand Minolta Hi-Matic E rangefinder. Mandrell worked as a custom darkroom technician in a professional lab for years and was eventually promoted to production manager. He was author of Indianapolis: The Circle City and coauthor of The Great Smoky Mountains: A Visual Journey, Indiana Across the Land, and Illinois Across the Land.

DeeDee Niederhouse-Mandrell's interest in the art of photography began over twenty-five years ago. What started out as a hobby eventually turned into a paying photography job-she is now the principal photographer for the Ray Skillman Corporation. After several years, Niederhouse-Mandrell became the corporation's creative photography manager for their upper-end magazine advertisements. She is coauthor of The Great Smoky Mountains: A Visual Journey, Indiana Across the Land, and Illinois Across the Land.