003 Jose Villa – Tips and Lessons Learned

Jose Villa is one of, or if not THEE, most known and sought after wedding photographer in the industry. Jose talks about his journey getting there and lessons he's learned along the way.   Elan Cohen: Let's start Jose. Take us take us all on your journey. How did your career start?   Jose Villa: Yeah, well I see some familiar faces so I'm sure you guys are going to probably like, I heard this before. I've been photographing weddings for about fifteen years or so, I'm formally trained, I went to Brooks Institute of photography. I grew up in Central, I guess coastal California and I grew up on a ranch and this is actually kind of fun being here because, like you know, it actually does feel like we're a little bit outside for a second. I love the outdoors. I normally or usually in most cases photographed outdoor weddings, vineyard weddings, private homes that kind of stuff. That's just where I'm most comfortable, that is where I grew up. So I, you know I want to, I just, I want to shoot in places that make me feel good. I'm not going to place myself in situations that I don't feel good in so I make it easy for myself and that's how I've been able to build my brand, is to just be you know photographing in areas that feel good to me, that I know I have full control in. Doesn't mean I don't photograph ballroom weddings, of course I do. But yeah I know for sure I mean I think, so that's a little bit about my background. I photograph roughly about thirty, thirty-five weddings a year. I used to shoot sixty weddings a year. I first started shooting weddings back when I think the average wedding photographer was maybe charging eighteen hundred dollars in my area. The first wedding I ever shot was four hundred dollars and I've always shot film, so I actually paid for the wedding, I paid for them. You know I see some nods over here, I know, but you know, you got to start somewhere and the beautiful thing today that we live in, you know of course this social media world and you need to take that to, you know, take that and run with it because honestly like for me Instagram is my portfolio. Would you guys raise your hand if you think that's true. Yeah everybody should be.   Elan Cohen: Remember how weird it was when you told us that you had just booked your first wedding from Instagram how like everybody was like whoa?   Jose Villa: I know that was like probably two and a half years ago maybe now. But about a year and a half ago a client called me and she said I had already booked her wedding and she said hey I'm really interested in hiring a floral designer, one of the best in California or anywhere, who do you recommend? And so she said don't send me their websites, send me their Instagram and I thought wow, like people aren't even going to people's vendors websites anymore. I mean maybe they are some are of course, but mostly they want to see Instagram and we all know that. I mean I see a lot of really young faces here and I think it's sort of for us, the younger well not, I'm getting older now but a lot of younger people here, you're using that platform and you should be. And what I always say to you is only show what you want in return. Do not show images that you don't absolutely love because if you do show those images you're going to get that in return. It's just going to happen. I'll tell you a really quick story, I have tons of stories but one of the funniest stories I think for me starting out was going through photography school we were trained to photograph everything from literally cars to buildings to children to, and you photograph everything. And the reason you do is because that's how you're going to fall in love with whatever it is that you're going to do for your career. And I remember at the time I used to go to [Sainta Barbara], I used to go to this really great Mexican restaurant and they had the best shrimp burritos. They put like you know zucchini in there and like mushrooms and like sour cream was amazing. So I rem --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thephotoreport/message