1 What’s the most exciting thing you have going on this year?

Moving into a new studio. I had been working out of my home for about ten years with four employees, so moving into a whole new place is exciting. We renovated it and everything. It took us nine months.

All Photos © Jose Villa

2 Are you a morning or a night person?

I’m a morning person. When we worked in our home, I made sure I was up before my employees came, we had coffee ready, or at least the computers were on and the music was on—that kind of a thing.

3 What was the last book you read?

I have not read a full book since high school. I did, however, listen to on audio Big Magic. I think every business owner needs to read this. Such an inspiration.

4 How much do you look at other people’s work?

It’s really, really difficult not to look at other people’s work, just because of social media and stuff like that. I try to keep away from looking at a lot of wedding photographers’ work other than just my friends that I follow. I really like Vivian Maier. I love looking at a different perspective of a time when we weren’t alive, and not ones that have been in books for years and years. I’m really inspired by her perspective of not necessarily doing this for a living but just being a person with a camera.

5 How did you and your husband, Joel Serrato, meet?

We met online 13 years ago when there was still dial-up, which is crazy. I proposed—let me look at the date, I have it on my ring—on July 20th, 2008. We had been together for about 7 years, and then one year pretty much exactly to the date, he proposed to me. It was one of those lazy days where you don’t want to cook anything so we just had tuna and crackers in bed. And then we got married—let me look at my ring again—two and half years after that.

6 With both of you being so busy, how do you two escape from work?

I know, that’s the hard part, I think that’s always the challenge. Joel had been and still does some Super 8 filming, but now does mostly stills, so it’s kind of an interesting thing: clients see on social media that he does a lot of second shooting for me and they’ll ask for him, like they want both of us at the wedding, which is great because we’re able to work together but it’s hard, too. We make it a goal to see our families twice a week. The other thing that helps is when we do these destination weddings—it’s still work, but—we’ll extend our stay an extra four or five days and we’ll just disconnect. What we need to do is a vacation where we don’t take any cameras.

7 What’s your photo industry pet peeve?

I could have said this two years ago, but I’m really tired of shoots that are over-styled. I’m super over those. It just kind of trashes the whole thing. Keeping it simple and not overdoing things with tons of crap in the picture is better.

8 How have you been affected by teaching workshops over the years?

One of the main things I wanted to teach photographers is that you’re worth it and not to give everything away. About 250 photographers have come to my workshop and I can say that 20 of them are some of the leading photographers in the industry now, and they’ve collectively helped all of us raise our rates. We went from a film photographer charging $2,500 to charging $8,000.

9 What childhood memory still makes you laugh?

Fighting with the neighboring kids with my two brothers. One day after summer school, after the bus dropped us off and we were walking home, the kids started fighting with us. I’m not a fighter, so I decided to find something around me that I could throw at them to distract them…not to hurt them, but to shoo them away.

Well, I found a lizard had been run over by a car right before us. The tail was still moving, so I picked it up and tossed it at them, not thinking it would ever make it close to their faces. It landed in one of the kids’ mouths. She started to throw up and we ran like mad. I know this is sort of a sick story, but it always makes me smile. We laughed about it as we became teenagers and into adulthood.

10 What food do you never get sick of?

I love, love Thai food. I could eat that every single day. Especially rice.

Jose Villa is a fine-art wedding photographer based in Solvang, CA. He has been featured in Martha Stewart Weddings, Grace Ormonde, The Knot, BRIDES and countless others.

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