We were lucky to catch up with Ann Alva Wieding recently and have shared our conversation below.
Ann Alva, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately as I have faced some huge challenges in my personal life in the last few years. Over and over again, I return to the place inside me that was instilled in me by my parents, grandparents and great-grandmother when I was young. I feel as though it is based on my heritage, epigenetics, life lessons and the unconditional love I received from them all. It taught me to care for myself as much as I care for others. It taught me to focus on the basics daily. And it taught me to fail, fall down and get back up and dust myself off and keep going.
However, as I have aged and learned from these lessons, the most important thing I do is plan out the details and visualize successful outcomes. It prepares me for the days and moments ahead and it is usually the first step in my workflow. I find it always pays off in the end.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a professional photographer, specializing in creative portraiture, commercial content and live music photography with an artistic eye and the ability to capture the magic moments in life. I run a client-friendly, service-oriented business and I value working closely with my clients to gain their perspective. I then use my abundant creativity and observational skills to translate that desire into a potent and visually-pleasing imagery.
Additionally, I am the Marketing & Business Development Manager, In-house Photographer and Producer for Space ATX Sessions for Space ATX. I regularly create digital visual content for their website and social media outlets and PR imagery for musicians.
Every spring, I work directly for the SXSW Atmosphere Photography team documenting the daily events. My work is featured regularly by their media outlets and has been published in such magazines as SX World, Rolling Stone Brazil, Mix, Mojo & Wildflower Magazine.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
As I look back on my varied career, I can see how all the jobs and projects I have worked on in the past have created the success I have in the present. Here are some examples and how they translate into the work I do today. In the beginning of my career, I worked with children, families and neurodivergent people in informal educational settings where I taught art, music, theater and science. Through that work I learned how to quickly understand people through open-ended communication, to intuit what their underlying needs and desires were and how to guide them through the creative process to an end product or outcome that worked best for them.
My advice to those who are early on in their journey is to learn how to take feedback from your bosses and peers alike. Whether it is direct or in their reactions to you, learn how to process it, calm your defenses and your ego and open your heart and mind to others perspectives. When you learn how not to react from an emotional place, take a beat and refine your response you create a healthy internal way of viewing information. Of course, if the person is way off base in their perspective it still gives you a chance to learn how to deal with other personalities. In the long run, I have learned as I have become a more capable communicator that people come back more and more to seek my advice or choose to work with me on a project. Ultimately, people in charge pick the people they trust to get the job done and who are fun and easy to work with. It’s better to be working with ease than to be clinging to your perspective and not understand the way others may perceive you.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I love getting to know my clients and collaborators perspectives. In the beginning of developing a relationship, I think it is very important to understand a person’s worldview and explore the ideas and reference points they feel driven by. In doing so, I find that we are better able to construct a creative concept and begin to develop a visual language that we will connect with. It also quickly builds trust and allows them to share an intimate side of themselves especially in a portrait session. Based on this philosophy I have developed a workflow that ultimately pays off with a deep satisfaction in my final images.
Anyone who is interested in exploring my work can contact me directly through my website or message me through Instagram.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bigredmuse.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigredmuse/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bigredmuse/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annalvawieding/
Image Credits
Ann Alva Wieding
