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Matt Payne

Matt Payne is a landscape photographer and mountain climber from Durango, Colorado. He’s the host of the weekly landscape photography podcast, “F-Stop Collaborate and Listen,” co-founder of the Nature First Photography Alliance, and co-founder of the Natural Landscape Photography Awards. He lives with his wife, Angela, his son Quinn, and his four cats, Juju, Chara, Arrow, and Vestal.

mattpaynephotography.com

Welcome to the first instalment of “Portrait of a Photographer!”

As an avid reader of On Landscape and through having conversations with photographers from all over the world on my podcast, it has occurred to me that there seems to be fascinating differences in styles, philosophical approaches, post-processing, colour grading, compositional techniques, and even an acceptance (or rejection) of conformist attitudes between landscape photographers residing in the United States versus those residing in Europe. Now, I am obviously generalising a great deal; however, these trends seem to be confirmed on a regular basis through my study of this artform and various in-depth conversations I have had with other photographers over the past several years. Indeed, some photographers from Europe, especially the United Kingdom, seem to have the (often accurate) view that many U.S.-based landscape photographers have a style that is over-the-top, overly colourful, and perhaps even outlandish or extreme in presentation. On the other side of the coin, I have found some photographers in the U.S. find the work of photographers in Europe to be bland, lacking excitement, and muted in presentation. In speaking with Tim and Charlotte at On Landscape, we decided that it would be a worthwhile endeavour to explore and perhaps close this divide by showcasing vignettes of featured photographers from other parts of the world and show their work shown here in On Landscape. Once a month, I will be featuring a photographer whose work I admire a great deal in the hopes of introducing this magazine’s audience to a broader array of work in other parts of the world.

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For the first iteration of this column, I decided to feature the work of Jimmy Gekas, a landscape and portrait photographer residing in San Diego, California. In my opinion, Jimmy has a way of seeing the natural world that few others possess; he is not afraid to reject conforming norms to present his work in a way that is unique, creative, and with a voice that only he brings to the table.

I have admired his work for many years and have had the pleasure of photographing with him in the field. To make things even more fascinating, I think that Jimmy mostly flies under the radar of other photographers and quietly continues to make beautiful photographs year-after-year. I am always amazed that he seems to always find things to photograph that I never see myself and he does so with such a casual yet playful attitude. Honestly, that is one of the things I admire the most about Jimmy’s style of photography – he might just be the most laid-back nature photographer I have ever met.