Originally born in England, Match has lived in Malaysia, Ghana, Tanzania and South Africa. Match worked in the gold mines of South Africa and later switched to software engineering. Match moved to the United States with his family in 1994. After spending a few months in New Jersey, the family settled in Colorado. Software engineering continues to be the day job.

Match’s first encounter with a camera was a Kodak (with 120 film). Later he graduated to an Instamatic that started the path into photography. At school, Match was introduced to the darkroom by a fellow student. “It was amazing to experience an image appearing during development process. From that point, there was no turning back.”

“In South Africa, I was briefly a member of a photographic club. Here was the first opportunity that I had to show my work to fellow members. The quality of my images improved. However, I soon tired of the competitive nature of the club scene.”

“I have always been fascinated by the natural world – the wildlife, the grand landscape, the intimate landscape, the abstract. Also fascinating is the urban landscape that man has helped to create. My focus is to attempt to capture the landscapes.”

“I have always enjoyed sharing and exhibiting my work. Prints are an ideal medium for showing one’s work. Much better than projection of transparencies in a dark place! I had produced monochrome prints in the wet darkroom. Color prints were just too complicated to produce. I had ceased to do any darkroom work prior to leaving South Africa. However, with the advent of the digital photography revolution, producing prints became so much easier.”

“Here in the western United States, we are fortunate to have some of the most unique, beautiful and diverse landscapes on planet earth. While discovering the landscape around us, I have attempted to capture this beauty to share with others.”

Match has been an active member with the Denver Digital Photography Club for the last 5 years. It is here that Match became actively involved in the sharing and teaching photography related topics to fellow members and other clubs. He has given many presentations that include panoramas, HDR, infra-red and monochrome prints. Recently, Match has also run informal workshops on Lightroom and Photoshop.

During 2010, Match started and completed “Project-52″, where he shot, processed and uploaded images to his blog on a weekly basis. Images were taken at many locations and have been posted at: http://matchgrun.com

Match and his wife Angela live in Englewood, Colorado, with their two cats Punkin and Jasper. They have two daughters, Susan and Nicola. Match can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Thicket Hairstreak butterfly - Long Canyon HCA

White Evening Primrose - North Foothills HCA

Boulder is located at a biological crossroads: along the Front Range, where the ocean of Midwestern prairie crashes into the Rocky Mountains. Plants and animals from both East and West mingle here, as well as rare and unique species. The city’s OSMP department has designated Habitat Conservation Areas (HCAs) as a way to protect places that provide a home to some of Boulder’s rarest and most sensitive creatures, including some trees and flowers so unusual that they are found nowhere else in Colorado!

Join naturalist Dave Sutherland for a slideshow tour of these special places, and learn how you can visit and photograph their beauty while protecting them for future generations.

Male bobolink singing - Tallgrass West HCA

Striped Chorus Frog, Cottonwood HCA