Finding Purpose in Your Pictures, with Matt Payne & Sean Tucker

How often do you think beyond the photos you make to consider the larger purpose they serve—both for yourself and, ideally, for a wider audience? In today’s show, we explore this idea while connecting the dots between picture making, process, and purpose. Our guides for this conversation are nature/landscape photographer and mountaineer Matt Payne, and street photographer, portraitist, and YouTube storyteller Sean Tucker. While Matt and Sean have widely different photographic specialties, they share much in common, from educational backgrounds in psychology to a profound commitment in using photography to find purpose in life.

Above Photograph © Matt Payne

Taking Matt’s 567-mile through-hike of the Colorado Trail as a jumping off point, we explore how balancing such a mammoth feat of endurance with a creative pursuit led him to look inward and see the world around him anew.

Beyond the how of making pictures, we discuss the all-important why’s of photography—from being more intentional in your image making to forging connections between learning and failure in order to grow creatively. By the end of this chat you’ll gain valuable insights about living and working with intention in world oversaturated by social media—where digital fatigue is a valid concern, and AI looms on the horizon.

As Sean Tucker notes, “We've been given this gift that can also be a poisoned chalice. And we each need to decide for ourselves how we want to use it, beyond the addictive qualities. We need to take some responsibility and say, ‘how much do I want this in my life so that it's useful? And where do I need to draw a line?’”

Guests: Matt Payne & Sean Tucker

Episode Timeline:

• 4:01: Matt talks about why he first started taking photos as an avid mountaineer, plus Sean describes his start and the first camera he had as a little boy.
• 8:52: Jung’s concept of two halves to creativity—the morning and the afternoon of life—plus Sean’s crisis point in his journey to making meaningful work.
• 15:06: Matt describes our modern addiction to dopamine and ways to become comfortable with introducing discomfort in your life. Plus, he looks back on his decision to focus full time on his photography two years after quitting his day job.
• 21:14: Knowing how you are wired and finding the place where your deep joy and the world’s deep hunger meet to pump purpose into the universe.
• 26:36: Matt’s 567-mile endurance hike of the Colorado Trail and how he balanced this with photography and creativity.
• 32:24: How to make sense of all the visual noise around you to become more intentional with your photography.
• 40:38: Episode Break
• 41:38: Find the magic by looking inward and asking yourself why you make the photos you do.
• 45:39: Sean’s simple camera set up, which is infinitely better than gear that great photographers had access to 40 years ago. Plus, the creative tension between making a mess and maintaining consistency to progress in your work.
• 50:37: Sean describes the nuances that define his style of street photography and discovering a connection to Edward Hopper’s paintings.
• 54:22: How to deal with creative slumps, places to look to for inspiration, plus making the space for new inspiration to come.
• 1:00:25: Making connections between learning and failure so to grow, plus digital fatigue and the desire to return to a pre-screentime era as an antidote to social media and AI.
• 1:10:06: How to remain relevant in today’s saturated marketplace, and parting advice for using technology to promote your unique creative vision—make the work you want to see more of in the world.

Guest Bios:

Matt Payne is a nature/landscape photographer based in Durango, Colorado. After connecting with nature first as a climber and mountaineer, his relationship shifted to photography. Nature has an innate beauty that doesn’t need to be exaggerated, so he strives to capture landscapes in ways that are truthful and ethical.

In 2017, Matt launched the podcast F-Stop Collaborate and Listen as a way to dive into meaningful conversations with other photographers and industry leaders about photography, ethics, and the challenges of rapid environmental change. He is also co-founder of Nature First Photography, an organization to help increase ethical awareness in nature photography and the Natural Landscape Photography Awards to celebrate nature photographers who dedicate themselves to photographing and editing their work in a realistic fashion.

Having already summited all 100 of Colorado’s Centennial Peaks, in 2023 Matt completed a 567-mile hike across the Colorado Trail for his current project, The Colorado Way: a Book of Mountains Trails and Growth. Featuring over 140 images and 25 essays, this book blends photography, storytelling, psychology, and wilderness to reflect on what it means to live with intention, resilience, and awe.

Sean Tucker is a photographer, filmmaker, author, speaker, and storyteller. Born in the UK, Sean spent most of his formative years in Africa, where he served as a youth pastor in South Africa during his 20s. Although that role is now behind him, Sean still carries a fascination with psychology and spirituality, which he brings to discussions around creativity. As a photographer and filmmaker, he’s been fortunate to tell visual stories for individuals, NGOs, and multinational corporations across more than 20 countries. He’s also helped organizations set up in-house studios and trained them to tell their own compelling visual stories. More recently, Sean built a large following online, both on YouTube and Instagram, where he talks about the “why” behind the things we make, seeking to inspire people on their own creative journeys. In 2021, Sean published the book, The Meaning in the Making to further share his philosophy for living a creative life.

Host: Derek Fahsbender

Senior Creative Producer: Jill Waterman

Senior Producer: Mike Weinstein

Executive Producer: Richard Stevens