About
Jennifer Smith-Mayo is a freelance documentary photographer and instructor.
Jennifer specializes in photography of fine dining, rural living, and farming. Her extensive portfolio also includes images of England, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, agriculture in New England, small town life in Maine, and many more subjects.
Jennifer’s photography is regularly featured in Down East Magazine. Her work has also appeared in Big Sky Journal, Western Art & Architecture, National Geographic, Wine Spectator, The Dalesman Magazine, DK Books Eyewitness Travel Guide Dublin and Maine 24/7, Globe Pequot Insiders’ Guide Series, Express Westerns’ Where Legends Ride, Farmworker Justice, Fly Rod & Reel, Shooting Sportsman, Inner Tapestry, New England Farmer, as well as in various newspapers and advertising campaigns. Her photographs have been selected for a variety of juried exhibitions and her solo shows include Kelmscott (Rare Breeds) Farm: Through the Seasons and Futzing with Focus: Images in Motion. Her photographs are in private collections all over North America.
Recent projects include launching the new documentary series Growing Local, which seeks to create awareness across cultures of the importance of using local foods. Jennifer created the series to examine traditional but popular regional recipes and to adapt them for use with only local ingredients. Each episode of the series documents—through still photography, ambient sound, and audio interviews—not only the creation of the adapted recipe, but also traces the ingredients’ origins and researches the current status of the region’s local food movement.
Jennifer graduated with a B.A. in Communications with an Emphasis in Photography from Goucher College, Towson, Maryland. She is currently pursuing her Master of Liberal Studies degree through the University of Maine in Orono and also works as an instructor for the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. Jennifer began her teaching career as a digital photography instructor with Adult Education programs in Vermont and Maine. During December 2007 and February 2008, Jennifer’s Ellsworth Adult education students hosted two exhibitions of work, Local Visions, at the Riverside Cafe and the Ellsworth Public Library in Ellsworth, Maine.
She has worked in nearly all aspects of her degree: photography, film (including Hidden Treasures of the Jesuits, The Crow and Where the Rivers Flow North), television, web design, graphic design, newspaper, and radio. Throughout the years, her passion for taking photographs has never wavered. “Photography,” she says, “makes me tick. It gets me out of a comfortable bed in the wee hours of the night to shoot.”
Jennifer and her husband Matthew Mayo, a novelist, and their two dear dogs live on the rugged coast of Maine. Jennifer frequently travels west to Montana, and east to Yorkshire, England.