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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.
Nature and landscape photography can provide an outlet for personal expression, discovery, and can foster a deeper appreciation for the world around us. Additionally, it often provides us with a much-needed outlet from the frustrations and tribulations that our daily and hectic lives seem to foist upon us on a regular basis. For nature photographer Jason Pettit, his pursuit of photography does all of the above and more. Jason was born and raised in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada, where he still resides with his wife and two teenage children. Jason works for the City of Belleville, a nearby smaller city, in their Planning Department. He reviews how new developments will fit into the City's existing systems by evaluating impacts on water, sewer and the environment. Jason’s work is full of bureaucracy and red tape, and photography helps him balance the frustrations of working within that bureaucracy. For Jason, nature photography is also about discovering metaphors that are mirrors into himself and for the viewer to also discover through his images. This idea of discovering meaning beyond literal representation in our photographs is not new and was first conceived of by photographer Alfred Stieglitz in the 1920s through the concept of “Equivalence.” The discipline of Equivalence in practice has become the backbone and core of photography as a medium for personal expression.