Richard Orton was born in Nacogdoches, a great, great grandson of Sidney Maury and Louisa Timberlake Orton, who arrived in Nacogdoches from Tennessee in 1839.  His family moved to West Texas in the early 1950’s where he grew up and went to school in Midland.

 After graduating from the University of North Texas in 1968 with a B.A. in Music he served two years in the United States Peace Corps in Liberia.  After the Peace Corps he moved to Austin where he lived for 36 years before returning to Nacogdoches in 2007.  While in Austin he earned a M.M in Musicology from the University of Texas at Austin, produced several summer music festivals, worked fifteen years in the field of sexual assault prevention and crisis services for the Austin Rape Crisis Center, the Child Assault Prevention Project (which he co-founded), and the State of Texas. 

In the early and mid 80’s he developed an interest in photography and spent three years documenting life in three elementary schools in Austin.  In the late 80’s, after becoming acquainted with the Upshaw family in the freedom colony of County Line in northwest Nacogdoches County, he began a project documenting the community’s history through photographs and oral history.  That project resulted in the publication of his book, The Upshaws of County Line: An American Family, by the University of North Texas Press in 2014 after twenty-five years of preparation.  The book won a best book award from the East Texas Historical Association in 2015.   Several of the images in the book first appeared in Freedom Colonies: Independent Black Texans in the Time of Jim Crow by Thad Sitton and James Conrad published in 2005 by the University of Texas Press, a book to which he also contributed oral histories from three freedom colonies.

In 2003 he became a photographer for the Texas House of Representatives, a position he maintained through the 2007 session. 

In Nacogdoches, he is active on the boards of the Friends of the Visual Arts and the African American Heritage Project and continues to work on photography projects and a blog on Freedom Colonies (rortonmac.wordpress.com).  In 2016, the Director of Galleries at Stephen F. Austin State University, John Handley, created a traveling exhibit based on Orton’s book that he funded and sponsors.  That exhibit became available in early 2107 and has shown in eight venues to date.

See www.richardorton.com for more examples of his work.

PEYTON paulette was born in lake jackson, TX and relocated to the nacogdoches area with his family in 1999 where he was raised. 

Peyton graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in 2008 with a B.B.A in Accounting and his Master’s in Professional Accountancy from Baylor University in 2009. He worked for a regional CPA firm in Houston for two years before relocating back to Nacogdoches in 2011.

From a young age, Peyton had a passion for film, filmmaking and storytelling. Deciding to turn his hobby into a profession, he enrolled as a Graduate student in the Filmmaking Department at Stephen F. Austin State University. After graduating with an M.F.A. in Filmmaking in 2015, he remained at his Alma Mater as a member of the art faculty teaching advanced cinematography, editing, production, and motion graphics - a position he maintained until 2019.

In the eight years he has been an active filmmaker, Peyton has worked on 15 feature films in capacities ranging from Director to Production. In the last few years he has gravitated to Cinematography as his primary calling, having served as Director of Photography on three feature films.

Currently in Dallas, Peyton serves as Media Director for a private company producing web and social media content.