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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.
For the twelfth iteration of this column, I wanted to showcase the work of a photographer who I have been admiring for quite a long time and whose work has been completely overshadowed within the realm of social media – Tara Workman. I first learned about Tara’s work on Instagram where she would consistently interact with my posts in a very thoughtful and kind fashion. After a few weeks of enjoyable interaction with “my.bajan.eye” (that’s her handle there), I decided to go look at her work to see what she was up to, and I was immediately blown away by the uniqueness, the quality, and the personal expression I found in her images. I also was intrigued by the person I was talking to via direct message and my very first question was to ask what “Bajan” meant. “Bajan” is a term that simply means “a person from Barbados,” which immediately intrigued me even further. Tara seemed to have so many unique qualities that I had never encountered before, and I really wanted to dig in to learn more. I immediately knew that this was someone who I wanted to talk to on my podcast to learn more about the person behind these interesting photographs. Through my podcast, I learned so many things about Tara, her motivation for making images, and how photography started out as a simple hobby for her and now plays a vital role in her ability to maintain her sanity as a family practice physician.