Joel Truckenbrod – Portrait of a Photographer

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

For the eighth iteration of this column, I decided to focus on the artwork of a photographer who I discovered through a stroke of luck. One of my friends and former podcast guests, and a truly wonderful black and white photographer in his own right, Chuck Kimmerle, emailed me to tell me about a photographer in Minnesota that neither of us had heard of before who has incredible work. Of course, I was very interested because I have found that finding high quality photography artists in the landscape and nature medium that I have never heard of before is quite a challenge in this digital age we find ourselves in. Upon examining Joel Truckenbrod’s work, I was immediately gobsmacked and impressed by his control of light, his use of composition, and the uniquely creative qualities found within it. Joel’s work oozes with personal expression, subtle yet wonderful nuance, and has an aethereal quality. Joel works exclusively within the black and white genre, which, admittedly, is not one that I find myself admiring very often; however, there is just something unique and interesting about Joel’s photography that pulls me in and gives me a glimpse into his soul. Perhaps these qualities are what we should all aspire to reach for in our own work as artists in this medium.

Joel is a native resident in the State of Minnesota along the northern boundary of the United States and the majority of his photographic work has been created there, especially the northeastern region near the Canadian border.