Anna Gallant McIntosh Follows Her Passions
New Anderson Artists Guild member Anna Gallant McIntosh isn’t one for sitting still. She has traveled the world and even when home splits her time between two cities. She’s also had several careers.
An Anderson native, she was influenced early on by her father, an amateur photographer. She said, “I have a recording of me sitting on his knee and he said, ‘This is a camera. Let’s go outside and use it.’” He later built her a darkroom in their basement.
Photography has always been a passion, but Gallant McIntosh has business smarts, too. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in business administration, then became a shopping center developer for a Charlotte real estate company. Her claim to fame is taking the first Publix out of Florida. “I enjoyed the teamwork,” she said. “I liked putting all the pieces together in the puzzle and working with so many people who are good at their jobs.” These collaborators included everyone from the person who moves the power pole for construction to attorneys, architects, engineers, and city employees.
Next, she became a full-time volunteer for Habitat for Humanity in Charlotte. She did a lot of construction work and learned AutoCAD to write a manual on how to build a house, illustrated with her own photographs. The position involved a lot of traveling and a desire to connect with people she met along the way, leading her to return to school for a master’s in Spanish and a BA in French.
That led to about ten years as a medical interpreter and translator.
When her house burned down, she took a step back and decided to make a change. “It was time for fun,” she said.
These days, photography is at the forefront. She travels with some retired friends to photograph the world. They call themselves The Four Shudders. Part of the group traveled to the Yukon with a fine art and landscape photographer who published for National Geographic. Another time they went to Cuba, where local photographers and a former Newsweek photojournalist took them around. When they entered a boxing club, one of the local photographers pushed her closer and closer to the action, telling her, “Get so close to the boxer that you think he’s going to punch you.’” This led to some great shots. Lesson learned.
Gallant McIntosh shoots with a Nikon Z8 and a Nikon Zf. “I love to have a camera in my hands,” she said. “It makes me see the world a little differently.”
For more information about Gallant McIntosh, visit https://gallantlens.com/.
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