About Ann Torrence and her photography

Briefly

I photograph out of my Salt Lake City base, with a focus on travel and environmental portraiture. I am currently working on a personal project that explores the overlooked and unusual along the intermountain corridors of Utah. I also consult on marketing and web site design for select clients.

Technology, web design and the digital debate

In 1995, AOL began offering direct Internet connectivity to its members. In the same year, as staff member on a research program at the University of Utah, I built my first website. That's when I began using Adobe Photoshop (version 3.0, with layers!) and I purchased a Sony digital camera for the project.

For my personal 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, but I wouldn't hesitate to fire up the film body to meet a particular technical challenge.

Now in 2005, I'm still coding html for some pages the hard way, speeding up my work with Adobe Image Ready for image maps and rollovers. I like Movable Type for managing frequently updated content. My web site design strategy is simple: work with my clients to understand, refine and then communicate their message, and make it simple for the site to evolve to meet their communication needs.

How photography happened to me

The passion to travel came first; as a child 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 to France. The camera I borrowed from my father had a light leak, but I treasured the images that transported me back to the wheat fields and villages of Languedoc.

In Tahiti twenty years later, my traveling companions and I overturned an outrigger canoe and my decade-old Minolta X-700 would meter no more. Two months later, I was recovering from a serious illness and wanting to give expression to what was important to me. That's when I made a decision to pursue my own photographic vision. I am fascinated by the challenges posed by interpreting my observations within the technological framework of the camera. Since then, photography has definitely impacted my travel. My alarm is set earlier, my bags are certainly heavier, and I have been amply rewarded by experiences and introductions to people who have enriched my life

Goals

2005-2006

• Complete a personal project of travel photographs in southern Utah
• learn enough Spanish to improve my travel and photograph experience in Latin America, and even the southwestern U.S.
• trips scheduled for Ireland and Argentina in 2006

long-term:

• photograph on all seven continents (three down, South America scheduled for 2006)

every day:

• photograph with integrity and honesty, both in the field and in the image

Quotes

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