About Ann Torrence and her photography

Contact Information

Phone: 801.557.0611

Fax: 801.582.6145

Briefly

I write and photograph out of my Salt Lake City home base, primarily shooting travel stories and environmental portraiture. I am working on a documentary project on U.S. Highway 89 that explores the people and landscapes of the intermountain west. I also consult on Photoshop, marketing and web site design for select clients.

I blog

I started blogging in August 2003 before a three month trip to New Zealand as a way to share my adventures with the folks back home. I have a lot of adventures, big and small, so I keep blogging.

How photography happened to me

The passion to travel came first; in elementary school I read atlases and pored over the maps that came in National Geographic. I brought a camera along to record my early trips - in high school, I rationed three rolls of film for an eight week student exchange trip to France. The camera I borrowed had a light leak, but I treasured the images that transported me back to the wheat fields and villages of Languedoc.

Twenty years later, my traveling companions and I overturned an outrigger canoe in Tahiti and my decade-old Minolta X-700 would meter no more. Two months later, I was recovering from a serious illness; I had plenty of time to think about what was important to me and how to express it. That's when I made a decision to pursue my own photographic vision.

Now my alarm is set earlier and my bags are certainly heavier. When I made that decision to redirect my life, I wanted to translate what I saw in my mind onto paper. I didn't anticipate the real gifts that would result: a richness of experience, new friends and their incredible generosity, and the honor of witnessing others' lives through the intimacy of the lens.

Technology, web design and the digital debate

In 1995, companies like AOL first offered their dial-up customers direct Internet connectivity. In the same year, I was a staff member at the University of Utah, and I built one of the first 25,000 websites in existence for a research project. That's when I began using Adobe Photoshop (version 3.0, with layers!) and I purchased my first scanner and digital camera for the project.

For my own photography, I stayed on the film side of the digital divide until the technologists solved the shutter lag problem. I jumped over when my favorite lab discontinued E-6 processing. Now I am shooting nearly 100% digital with Nikon equipment.

The ATstudio: web design consulting

Under the credit line ATstudio, I consult for small companies for website developent as part of their marketing and sales strategy. Some sites I've designed include Signature Immunologics, Molecule of the Month, VisualShare and their blogs, Metablog and TrishTalk, as well as my own site and its blog variation, the Ann-alog.

Quotes

A few of my favorites about photography, creativity, and more

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world. - John Burroughs

In a way, I never believed that it was me who found the places I photographed, but rather that the opposite is true. Those places called to me. - Wim Wenders