Summary: 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 remember going to this restaurant and thinking like the third time I went I thought, gosh you guys don't have any photos, like I want to see what I'm ordering and I said I will photograph your menu. And the owner said OK well how much do you charge? Well actually I had never actually made any money in photography, so I just threw a number out there and I said a hundred fifty dollars each, each photo, each set up and he said great no problem, sounds good, we have forty two for you. And I'm like oh my God, and I'm like working at Rite Aid Pharmacy making, you know twelve dollars an hour at the time and I’m going to school and I said great. And so of course we did it a week later and I lit the tacos so beautifully. It was like amazing. And I literally mastered the look of photographing tacos and burritos. And so then guess what? Their competitors were calling me and saying hey we saw these photos, we want you to photograph our menus and I thought awesome, more money you know. So that helped me get through school, I was literally going around photographing tacos around the area. Elan Cohen: You had the market cornered? Jose Villa: I had the market cornered. I know and that's how that's where my styling, you know my photography started. Was moving the being just right in the perfect spot. But you know honestly just by doing things like that, that really has helped me in obviously now photographing and styling gorgeous things and finding a certain client that now has, you know instead of a burrito, it's fifteen hundred dollars, you know, Jimmy Choos or Christian Louis Vuitton or whatever it is. So anyway so going back to sharing and showing what you want in return, I then started to create a website. The work that I had was student work and guess what? I had a lot of taco work, you know from and I'm not I'm not even joking I did. And so what I did is I showed that work because it was beautifully lit, not knowing that what was going to happen was guess what the next call that came in was another fucking restaurant, you know and I said no this is not what I want but that's the thing, is that I was showing images and attracting that and sometimes we don't think like that. I think sometimes we're thinking like this is beautifully lit, it's gorgeous, it's styled beautifully but maybe this is not the direction that I want to go in and so I was quickly took that down. I took all this stuff down off my website and again this is back in the day when there was no social media, no Facebook, no [it’s persona pretty], none of that and as soon as I started doing that people were now calling me just on what I wanted to do, which was mostly in the at the time, children photography and then some weddings and things like that. So you know I really, I really take this really serious like what you show, is what you're going to get in return and I know that, you know you've probably heard that but just really sit down and think about this. If you are on your Instagram later today, tonight when you have five seconds after you go breathe some normal air because this is not normal air, go down your Instagram and literally like delete images that you think, you know maybe six months ago you liked it but maybe you don't like it now. Do it and I know sometimes it might feel a little like, oh man you're losing a little part of your soul, but if you really truly feel like you love it, leave it, but if you don't get rid of it and even, even if it's literally you're deleting a hundred pictures, like I've done this. I go back and delete images all the time because I want my Instagram to all look like the top nine or the top twelve. I want them all to look really beautiful together as well you know. So not only are we photographers but we're also art directors I say that a lot and we're time management people, we’re business people. It's hard being a wedding photographer, being a photographer in general is not easy. So anyways it's a little bit of a ramble into I guess the beginnings. Elan Cohen: Anybody got any question? Jose Villa: Yeah and you know what like I want you guys to ask any questions throughout the whole process like this is just day one, I’m going to back here tomorrow and the next day and then I'll be a [fooje boose] as well. And I know some of you guys are going to my master class but this is why you come to these things. I’ve been coming to WPI for fifteen years in a row, like that's kind of nerdy right and I know, I know. And I was sitting down there and I was thinking like gosh like, I love that I got to meet the person next to me and that's how I found some second shooters and that's how, you know, I found friends that we’re now, we refer to each other. So this is what's so cool about coming to things like this. Elan Cohen: So ask questions because if you don't, then what the hell are you doing here? You know, you're not just, believe me, this is not a pretty face. So yeah seriously if anybody, who here shoots fims? Just start that. Whoa that's awesome! OK good, cool I love that. I feel like Bill who here shoots film because they like the way Jose shoots and kind of picked it up because of that. See just as many names. Jose Villa: I don't know but when I first started coming here, when was this maybe about ten years ago or so, well fifteen years ago when I started but ten years ago, I was, nobody here was shooting film, nobody. Maybe twelve years ago and I felt alone, I felt like I was literally wandering these halls and going: what the hell am I doing here? Like I just don't connect. Of course we love photography, we know that, but like everyone was afraid to shoot film because it was too expensive and because there was digital and digital was new. Well guess what I see a lot of young faces here. For you guys, for a lot of the younger photographers, film may be new to you because the first camera that you received was a digital camera that your parents gave you when you were fourteen years old or fifteen years old. And so that, everything really just does do a whole full circle, it always does and I've seen it and luckily for me I stay true all the way through. I've never shot digital for a wedding myself, I have had second shooter shoot digital. Do I shoot digital for commercial work? Yes I do. If you guys follow me on social media, I did the Mrs Box campaigns. Did you guys see that? That was shot on the contacts and I put the, it's an I.Q.2 fifty back. Anybody familiar with those digital box? They're really, really expensive but they're really, really quite beautiful and they're great for consistent light. We were shooting everything right by the window all day long, there was no direct light anywhere and we literally shot from eight o'clock in the morning to about five fifteen when the sun went down and guess what, the exposure was pretty much exactly the same the whole time. When I first did the campaign, this is campaign number five, when I did the first campaign I was super unsure about shooting it on film. And summer walk ins who is the creator of it, she said I want film like this is why I'm hiring you. And I said OK ,well ofcourse, oh I love film but what happened was I felt really insecure knowing that maybe my images were going to be so sharp because we're dealing with specular objects, we’re dealing with rings and diamonds and things like that. And so I decided that I would rent this back, I mean this back is like forty something thousand dollars and it's like a thousand dollars to rent. It's ridiculous! So I did it but what I did is because I was so unsure and I didn't feel really good about the whole thing, I shot film and then I, I would shoot like one whole set up on film and then I'd get the back, take the back off take forever and then shoot it with digital, just so that I can compare and so that I can see and if we ended up loving the film, then we would give him the film, but if we ended up loving the digital, we had given the digital. Guess what? We ended up loving the digital way better because it was a product, because it was specular, because it was a diamond and of course then we're dealing with their velvet boxes. So we've got two different types, two different contrasts or contrast here. You know, so we ended up doing campaign number one on both, I mean I probably spent like eighteen hundred dollars on film and processing that went to the garbage. But you know I think it was OK because sometimes for me I have to do it in order for me to, and I see some nods over here, to actually really pay attention and to really just kind of like fall my ass first or just learn that way on my own. And so now we're on campaign five, we're going to do campaign number six in October but it's super, super easy now and it's just, I think a lot of times too I want to mention is that, we overthink lighting a lot of times as photographers, keep it simple like all you really need to do, because people ask me all the time at weddings do you take like reflectors, do you shoot flash in the day? No, no, no. Keep it super simple, like literally all I need is open shade and a window and that's it. If you don't have that I totally understand. Maybe you work now with flash or more possibly with video light which one of the biggest questions that a lot of film photographers and I think you guys will also agree, is that it's really maybe a challenge to photograph at night. Right? With a film that's like one of the biggest questions I get is: well how do you shoot film at night? Well I shoot with the Kodak800. I push it possibly to eight hundred or even sixteen hundred and then I'm not pushing anything in the lab because I feel like there is room for error, there is human errors and there's you know of course there's humans processing things and if you can go, if you can you know go beyond a specific time then of course your images become contrast and they can get ruined in all these things. So I try not to push in the lab. What I mean is, I do it by my exposure when I'm photographing. I also will do video light. I like doing video light I think it's a beautiful, kind of a really classic especially black and white 3200 speed film. And a lot of times my client say well you know, we're looking for a digital photographer to do night stuff and I showed them images and I tell them there's no need but if you want, that's fine we can hire a second shooter and it's called of course, now it’s just going to cost a little bit more. So anyways, any questions you guys, just out the door here yes? Yes. So the question was how do I get my digital from like, let's say the Mrs. Box to look a little bit comparable to the color with, with film. Honestly to be honest with you, I don't do anything with the images. I use a grey card and I have to and I shoot it probably, like I check my color maybe every shot and like last week we did 52 shots in a day. So I checked it 52 times because I would much rather check it, do a test on it and then photograph that whole scene, so I don't have to do anything in the computer. Sometimes your underexposing a little bit because maybe the highlight is blowing out and we know that we may have to, you know back in the computer, just bring it back a little bit. And I think I shot 1400 images, I just actually sent them to a client. 1400 images and we probably maybe fixed like, I don’t know 500 of them. A lot of times the color was going a little yellow and the reason is because in my studio where we were shooting, in the distance there's a little bit of a wall or there's not a bit a little bit of a wall, there's a big wall in the distance that's kind of an orangey tone and the sun in that specific time was bouncing that light into the office or the studio and it started to go a little yellow. But you know ofcourse you check your exposure, you check your grey card and that's, that's pretty much how I do. It's pretty simple actually. That camera is pretty amazing, I mean if you guys, if you have an opportunity to try it, it's quite beautiful. I don't think that I would photograph it at a wedding. At this time I'm not, I'm not ready. I also think that it's slow, you know bride and groom are walking down the aisle, so my favorite photos that I've ever taken are with my contacts, you know them walking down there's emotion and I'm trying to like keep up with them and that camera, I've tried it, just you know to test it out, phase one, you know sponsor me for a little bit and I click, click, click and the thing was too slow you know. So it is a little bit of a delay, so I probably wouldn't shoot for weddings at this moment yeah. Elan Cohen: What are some of the most surprising differences between wedding photography and the commercial photographer you’ve talked about and the fact that you shoot a digitally? Jose Villa: Yeah I think I like them both and I'm starting to tap in a lot more into commercial work and advertising work and stuff like that. I like the commercial work because I feel like I have, like my clients that come to me have, they basically want me to do whatever I want. You know they want me to be the art director and so it's like I just create a shoot and I just tell people what to do and or what I like and then they'll just do it. Same thing with the wedding and that's kind of what you want to do is like as a brand, that's where you want to be. You want your clients to come to you because you have a specific look and they want you, you want them to ask you like who do you recommend. Why? Because the wedding is going to be beautiful if you recommend your very talented, you know friends. So but the, main, but the biggest difference for me is that for weddings, I just, obviously there's real moments and real people and there's a lot more of like a gratification, like I just feel like people thank me and I'm creating a part of history for them and their family. And with like commercial work, it's kind of just a job you know, but like still it's, it's still gratifying, I still love it because of course I get to photograph how I want. But with a real wedding, I mean usually. Elan Cohen: You see that connection. Jose Villa: Yeah, you see you know your clients cry in front of you sometimes hopefully because your photos are good. You know or whatever or whatever it is but no it's just, it's just a human kind of bond, I think to like when you bond with people it’s just based on like creating images of like their family, like I just had somebody recently their, their, parent had passed away and this is crazy and the dad had a heart attack at the wedding on Father's Day. It was like the craziest thing and I, and he was an older guy and I took some amazing portraits of him in the day with him and his wife and he had beautiful face and like Asian you know just beautiful, beautiful wrinkles all that stuff. He was probably in his eighty's and anyways he had a heart attack and passed away a couple of weeks after but I felt so good that I had, you know gotten those images and I didn't know he had passed away except everything hit like just everything came to a halt during the toasts, literally during the toast. It was crazy for like two hours and then the groom who is a doctor and he went in the ambulance with them. It was like it's crazy but that's life, I mean, that's just what happens you know. But I just felt so good knowing that I had some amazing pictures and she told me, she said hey I need some enlargements because of my dad passing away and I of course I didn't know at the time, but in it felt good that she was just like happy that I had tons of pictures of them you know. So you know that's kind of like, right that just kind of says it all, really you know, but, but commercial work is really, is really, really fun. Elan Cohen: What are, what are some of the commercial jobs you're working on now other than what you've gotten previously? Jose Villa: Yeah, so I actually have a bunch of hotel, hotel jobs or hotel clients. Four seasons is one of my clients, Rosewood is also one of my clients and I'm working on other hotels. You know they want a wedding photographer to come and photograph their venue to be able to attract those clients, you know. So we're we've done a bunch a little, not necessarily look books but like just little I guess campaign shoots for them. Elan Cohen: And would you shoot that in film or is that digital as well? Jose Villa: That's all film. Anything that has to do with like an actual model or humans or whatever, that's all going to be Elan Cohen: So you’re saying a product is? Jose Villa: Yeah. Elan Cohen: Digital and? Jose Villa: Yeah, yeah. And I mean I think we did, we did some digital of their location at night like at sunset or something like that, we did a little bit of digital but for the most part it's going to be film especially when there's some skin tone, skin tone you know of course that needs to be, the thing with blowing out your negatives and for those of you that shoot film, what I mean is you're over exposing your film and I'm assuming you're like a Stoppard maybe too sometimes you have to be careful with the skin tone blowing out. You want the skin tone to still look really true and I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we have as film photographer is if we are going to be blowing it out and then using the combination of like a noritsu scanner, then you're probably going to be blowing your skin tone out a little bit. So people ask me all the time well, why do you use in the noritsu, why don’t you use the frontier. Are you guys familiar with those two machines? Yes I see some nos and yeses okay. If you nodded no, you need to do your research and as a film photographer you need to do some testing. You need to figure out what it is that you like not just because you saw, you know, my work or [Messina's work] or whomever's. You definitely need to just do your thing and test it all out. I attend and people ask me this all time: why, why do you use this all the time, the noritsu versus the frontier in certain cases. Well, it really depends, it depends on the lighting situation, if it's a really beautiful day in California, we have gorgeous sunset and we’re probably going to the frontier. If it's a really dark day and I'm photographing, I don't know, wherever even in California let's say, then I'm probably going noritsu and the reason is because the frontier tends to go darker in the shadows but the skin tone to me tends to be a lot more true. In on the noritsu the skin tone tends to blow out a tiny bit and you have to dial that back, but the shadows will definitely not bog up or get clogged like they would in the frontier. So it's just a different style. I know some of you do shoot Fuji and some you shoot Kodak. I honestly love Fuji, I think Fuji is just a better look for me, but I do love the Kodak. The Kodak800 is a, is one of my big films that I use, you know, maybe twilight or as the sun is going down. So that's, that's my formula and you all have to have your own formula. Whatever that formula is just, you know, it's all about testing and figuring it out on your own and sometimes we change, you know sometimes we shoot a 100% Fuji or you know 100% Kodak. But you really have to make sure that you make the right decisions because that is what's going to determine your brand moving forward as well, like it all has to be consistent and I think that's a really big word for me, is consistency, making sure that everything is consistent throughout. As a wedding photographer we know that sometimes we run up against you know, six different lighting situations or whatever it is you know, super bright light to then light dark church or maybe a ballroom or whatever it is, but your job as a film photographer and a digital photographer obviously, but your job and a little harder as a film photographer is to make all of that consistent without having to be stuck in front of a computer. Who here loves to be in front of a computer? Nobody, one boo. Elan Cohen: Boo. Jose Villa: Yeah I know, honestly like and when I ask that question it's always like one person and that's great that's, that's what they love and that's and that's good. Any way you have a? OK question. How do I make the transition into weddings and then into commercial? Honestly it's been just the natural organic progression, people yeah people have contacted me and because of that I have, I've actually not pursued it myself. I’ve talked to a couple of reps as well, I mean in the commercial world, in advertising world a lot of photographers have reps. I've talked to a few, but honestly like I feel like the clients that I want to attract in the commercial world are ones that don't want to work with reps, they don't want the drama, they don't want and I understand you know and it's, the reason you want to have a rep it’s almost kind of like having insurance I guess, almost like having it you know, like a lawyer I guess if you will. Because they're in charge of contracts, they're in charge of payments they're in charge of all that but they're going to take a big cut you know. And so if you're OK with that then that's fine, I have friends that are OK taking that. But the main thing for me is that I always like to have that client relationship, like summer I was with a Mrs Box, we became friends before she even created this box, so that's a little different but with like rosewood hotels, when they contacted me they said we have 18 properties, we have one property that we want to start off with you shooting and it's going to be in Italy and do you have a rep? And they said if you do can you have them send us a quote and I said No I don't have a rep, I will send you a quote myself and they loved that literally they picked up the phone and I was talking to Mark over at Rosewood hotels and we had a good conversation and he loved the fact that I was not just trying to you know, add all this money for digital retouching and all these things that a lot of people do and it's worth it, look believe me, it's worth it. I just didn't want to go there you know. So from that experience I actually decided that I would, I wouldn't want to do, I wouldn’t want to get a rep at this point, at this time but it, I think it was just kind of an organic thing and that's what I do in my life, I mean in my business. I tend to just let everything just kind of happen organically. From the very, very beginning I never really thought that I would be doing weddings. I actually was photographing kids first and the reason I was, was because I was really afraid to talk to adults, I’m being honest. I didn't know how to tell people to pose. I felt really in secure about how people were feeling or, or how they thought they saw themselves in the, you know or the how they felt and how the photos were going to translate. And people would tell me and I maybe they tell you this now is, I feel fat you know or this doesn't feel comfortable and so I just didn't want that and so I started with children because I could just run after them and they didn't care. Elan Cohen: How did you get over that? Jose Villa: I got over it because well one of my clients who had been a client of mine from a while ago, from school, I was photographing her kids and she said hey will you photograph my sister's wedding and I said no, no, no, no and I went to Brooks you know. Brooks is well unfortunately no longer is around but you know me thinking well and they, they teach you this at Brooks. Like you don't come to the school to be a wedding photographer, you come to be, you come to be like any Liebowitz here you know or David La Chapelle or all these amazing photographers and so I always thought no way I'm too good for weddings and so I said alright I'll do the job but like nobody can talk to me at the wedding, like I don't want anybody talking to me, I just want to be a fly on the wall and you know the sister was like I’ll ask my sister about whatever. And so she called me back thirty minutes later she said OK you're hired how much do you charge and I said oh well four hundred dollars and she said Great you're hired and so I started doing that and really just sort of doing, just like photographing of like a fly on the wall which is great being this photo journalist because back in the day that was a thing. Have you guys heard of Dennis Reggie, you think you know they were sort of the I would say the wedding gown or the founders of the wedding photo journalism movement back in the day and so the knot magazine was telling their brides hire photographers that are wedding photo journalist. So people were calling me because they saw the first weddings that I did and they said are you all for a wedding photo journalist and I would say yes I am even though I had no fucking idea what that meant. I mean I did but and so I just, I didn't know what I was doing but I did it and so what I started realizing though is that, that wasn't necessarily one hundred percent of what I or how I would want you know to be running a successful wedding business. I felt like I needed to direct and I needed to insert myself and just you know tell them what to do like walk that way but also relax and do this and do that. And as soon as I started doing that I started to really fall in love with my work. I started to really, I feel like take control and, and I was I was creating it if that makes sense. Yes of course you know as a wedding photographer I think a good wedding photographer is one that has a million different thing, hats that we put on, but, but the main two is really you know as the end result as being a good journalistic photographer, a fly on the wall but also a really good director but with you know not being so intrusive you know. So as soon as I started doing that I also noticed that my sales would go up because people started to look a lot better in their pictures, they didn't have that double chin. Even though you want to get that beautiful moment I still say look your chin up you know and then they would raise, and then literally and sometimes they'd freak out and go and then they ruin the moment you know. But just directing definitely helped my business for sure. I started loving it a lot more and it just, it just you know one thing sort of led to another yeah. Elan Cohen: What would be like your top three tips for a wedding photographer that's trying to get into a shooting more commercial work? Jose Villa: I would say start creating photo shoots not necessarily to be blogged, just for yourself. Back, I don't even know, maybe some of you have seen this these images but it's a beautiful couple, they're models in a river swinging and going up stairs, yeah okay that shoot. I did that shoot years ago because I wanted to finally kind of break into a little bit of the editorial photography and editorial photography doesn't pay, it just doesn't. But I wanted to be able to tell a story and at the time I was really hitting a wall with doing engagement sessions. Who here feels like there are so over engagement sessions right now? Because it's like it's very repetitive, can you say that it's very repetitive. Yeah exactly I have for you and at the time I was getting this one where I felt like it's so repetitive, just stand there lean into each other, hug, give her a kiss on the cheek, give her a kiss on the hand, you know it's just like I was saying same thing. And so I just felt like I needed to tell a story and at the time what I did is I, I hired models, I went and I photographed, do you guys know who [techn fitaj] is, a photographer yeah. I photographed his wedding back in 200, I think it was maybe a while ago and while I was driving past to his location, I remember to the right a really beautiful emerald green, beautiful, gorgeous river and I looked at the water and I'm like damn that looks toxic, I wonder if it's even safe to jump in there. But it was literally like a beautiful, like a god they call it was amazing, a little deeper than that. And I thought one day I'm going to come back and one day I'm going to do a photo shoot here and it's going to be a shoot for myself, not for a paid job, not for anything like that, I'm just going to do it for myself. Sure enough I showed texts photos it was on the cover of the first cover of Southern Weddings magazine and I, that's one of, I think there's a lot of times you think about, you know for me people ask me: what are like the top three things that maybe were business changing you know decisions you made or whatever and shooting [tax] wedding at a big discount, let's just say, it was good, it was really good for me. Anyways we got the wedding published, I started to get inquiries for the same area and the singer songwriter and national contact me to say, her name is Francesca, I'm getting married in this area, will you come to shoot my wedding and I said yeah of course and I thought yes, I'm going to shoot the wedding, I want to get paid what I'm worth that I didn't give any discounts and I'm going to do that shoot by that toxic river. And so. Elan Cohen: Does the toxic river have a name? Jose Villa: Maybe it does I should as that, I don't know. It's beautiful though and so I booked the wedding, I hired an hour and not hired necessarily, but we, we connected with joy Proctor you guys know who joy Proctor is, you know worked with [once white]? OK. So Joy and I met years ago when we did [Tax] wedding and so I contacted her and said hey I have this idea to do this shoot, I'm hitting a wall with engagement sessions excuse me and I had this idea like I just want a beautiful model, gorgeous you know swimsuit, I have an idea of maybe black I'm not sure. Black, black clothing all that stuff and so we did it and then I showed it on my blog, blogs of course like there were a lot bigger, I don't get as many hits anymore on my blog than I do like let's say on Instagram or let's say but we showed it and the crazy thing is that the next engagement sessions, guess what my clients were saying: I want that, I want that. And so literally like the next 6 shoots we're pretty much doing that, like I had this bride that said I have a ranch in my area and where we live and I have a lake and I want to do in a beautiful dock and I want to do the same thing in this lake and I said perfect. It became a thing where it was like, we were doing the same thing now, like doing lake shoots and I’m like OK stop. So I think by just doing things like that and setting shoots up for yourself, that you just feel like are inspiring to you that has led into doing commercial work, that has led into doing editorial work because.
