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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

For the ninth iteration of this column, I decided to focus on the artwork of a photographer who has long inspired me, not only because her photographs are powerful, evocative, and unique, but because she is one heck of an amazing person and a fabulous steward of the natural places we all cherish. In fact, Jennifer is a co-founder of the Nature First Photography Alliance along with me and eight other photographers from Colorado. Her passion and commitment to nature are quite evident as seen in her actions and the way she creates her photographs. Jennifer’s photographic style and creative processes are quite fascinating to examine, and I am hopeful that this article does her work justice. To begin, let me say that I think Jennifer’s photography unfairly flies under the radar of what is often considered to be popular or mainstream and I am hopeful that this column provides her work the opportunity it deserves to be seen and appreciated.

Jennifer’s approach to photography is heavily influenced by her interesting educational and vocational upbringing and experiences, having a degree in geology and a background in veterinary medicine. As you can imagine, both sciences rely on the power of observing, as rocks cannot tell you how they were created, and animals cannot tell you what is wrong.

Her honing of these scientific skills has benefitted her artistic side greatly and it seems apparent to me that it has aided her photographs in a profound way. She relies on and leverages the power of observation of the landscape, and it has positively shaped and informed her creative process and image-making. Jennifer has masterfully combined her curiosity and observation of nature with an approach formalised as the slow photography movement to explore and connect with the landscapes and subjects around her. This combination shines through in Jennifer’s photography, as it transports viewers to magical moments and smaller scenes within nature that could only be experienced by the trained and patient eye of someone with Jennifer’s unique background and approach.