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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 two cats, Juju and Chara.
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.