Meet Angela Watts

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Angela Watts a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Angela, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

I believe that creativity can bloom when two things are present: constraints and playfulness. As artists we often think that we need new gear, more time or more freedom to get new ideas or to try something new, but I have found the opposite to often be true. Placing some sort of constraints on a project and giving myself limits/deadlines and parameters forces me to execute ideas and the playfulness allows me to stop worrying so much about if it’s good or not, just create and inevitably, the ideas will come. I’ve given myself lots of personal projects, such as year long daily challenges, self portrait projects, and “assignments” that have limitations on them, such as “take a photo each day this month using a new lighting technique.” or creating a new self portrait every day for a month. This breaks the pattern of just creating for others or for a client and making art for the sake of the making and not just for the result. The mentality of this all just being a playful experiment allows you to not take it all too seriously. Plus it means the whole process is more fun!

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I have been a wedding and portrait photographer in Oregon for the last 15 years. I run my own business as well as raising two teenagers with my husband of 20 years. I pride myself on focusing on my clients unique personalities and allowing them the freedom to fully be themselves in all their quirky and wonderful weirdness. I prefer the real over the forced, fake or contrived. I offer a documentary style approach to the majority of the wedding day with playful direction during the portraits so the photographs are honest and true to who you truly are. I also offer a full documentary-style, all-day, portrait experience called “Time Capsule Sessions” where I spend a normal day with a family or subject and without any direction or posing or interference, I simply observe and preserve the day and then deliver 100% black and white images a full year later to truly delay the gratification and give the client a truly unique experience of seeing a day in their life through my eyes.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The most important skills I’ve developed throughout my journey would be persistence, flexibility and gratitude. Being an entrepreneur means you are often working on your business by yourself, and the emotional roller coaster of the highs and lows of that can be quite draining and can make you want to quit. Being able to persist through the challenges and not allowing set backs to deter you from carrying on and holding true to the things you want to do will pay off in the end.
Flexibility is also extremely important because all sorts of things can come up on a wedding day, and every client is different and being able to adjust quickly and not let the changes throw you off is vital. I’ve built my business over the past 15 years while also raising my children which required a lot of flexibility and squeezing in work time around their schedules.
Gratitude is something I’ll likely always be working on and looking to increase but I have found it to be extremely powerful to put your life and your circumstances into perspective and to keep an attitude of humility and positivity. Finding and expressing gratitude for even the simplest things in your life can bring so much joy and peace to your life.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

One book that has help me immensely is Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Her perspective on creativity and releasing yourself from the ownership of your ideas and simply think of yourself as a conduit to actualize them was so incredibly freeing. All you have to do is create, let the world decide if it’s good or not, but keep creating and more ideas will come.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tekoarosephoto.com
• Instagram: @tekoarosephoto
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tekoarosephoto

Image Credits

Tekoa Rose Photography