Being bitten by the camera bug at an early age, Susan Thorsen officially declared herself a photographer at eight years old. As a young girl, her obsession with taking pictures surfaced as she was continually "posing" her then baby sister in multiple outfits and scenarios, clicking away with their father's camera until her sister cried for mercy and their dad went broke from buying and developing film. In the early 1970's, she began studying fine arts and photography during high school in Portland, Oregon, and college at Portland State University and the University of Oregon. By this time Susan was finding her photographic interests focusing on people and animals. She became both challenged and motivated by one of her school projects - to build a successful business with photography, the business not being simply a "studio". Combined with her love of music, the school project became a life-reality when she began photographing musicians that needed promotional photographs for their aspiring careers. By the 1980's, Susan's love of the "music people" had put her photography into another sphere. She had advanced to becoming one of the few women photographers allowed behind the scenes of the Portland music world. Susan spent many years photographing bands as the house photographer at several very large Portland music venues and photographing the west coast legs of tours of world renowned recording artists live in concert in huge capacity arenas.
"It was an incredible time in my life and the memories that I captured on film I'll carry with me and treasure forever. Most of the people I met and worked with during those days were so charismatically fascinating, it's no wonder they ended up as successful as they are".
Not that those days are totally over, but by the early '90's, Susan had moved her life to Denver, Colorado and a less frenzied persuance of photographic interests. Taking a break from the world of rock stars and living life on the "other side of the clock", Susan began photographing purebred dogs for one of the largest calendar publishing companies in the world. Once again, she found herself in another area of photographic interest that pulled on her heartstrings. Susan has also branched out into photographing weddings on location. She plans to continue on in all aspects of what got her to where she is today - photographing the occasional concert, assisting musicians with their promotional projects, and the on-going connection with nature through her purebred dog photos. Basically, anywhere there is a passion, count her in to capture the image for the memory books! And what about that baby sister??? As with most things she's taken on in her life, Susan has come full circle. She's now photographing the baby's baby who is already seven years old and showing serious indications of becoming a camera nut herself!
