Michael and Anna Costa are a husband and wife team based in California. I am lucky enough to call them friends and they have been a great inspiration to me for years. Plus Mike and I have a great time exchanging killer music with one another. I had both the honor and privilege of interviewing them for the website. I know we have a lot of wedding photographers checking in so pay extra close attention to this interview! Be sure to take a look at their website HERE (their Blog is HERE) and I am sure you will see why. So without further ado, here is what they had to say:
Q: Can you tell me a little bit about yourselves?
A: We are Michael + Anna Costa Photographers. We are located in Southern California and shoot mainly in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles with various jaunts around the country/world each year for shoots.
Q: What areas of photography do you specialize in?
A: We are wedding photographers! We have been in business for 4 1/2 years and love what we do. We love the creative control, energy and fun of shooting weddings. Its a VERY rewarding job and it certainly keeps us on our toes. We love a challenge and so this business give us the opportunity to constantly be growing. Not only in our work, but our business as well.
Q: How would you describe your styles?
A: We are fine art photojournalists. We are also hybrid photographers – shooting BOTH digital and film photography. We put a high priority in quality of work and providing our clients with something truly unique. We want them to hang our pictures on their walls not only because its their wedding, but because they consider it a work of art.
Q: So where do you draw your inspiration from?
A: There are so many amazing photographers out there that are truly inspirational. Mostly commercial photographers are who we like to follow the most. However, we’ve found that in this stage of our career we have to really have to look inward for inspirations so as to set ourselves apart artistically. However, on the business side we’ve found inspiration from legendary authors such as Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie to great leaders in business such as Robert Kiyosaki or Tim Ferriss. We find countless inspiration from reading books pertaining to our business and find that it may be one of the most important things in separating ourselves from the masses long term. RIF (Reading is Fundamental)
Q: What is it like being a husband and wife team? Any pros and cons?
A: We absolutely love being a husband and wife team. We joke that our marriage has been put on hyper drive a bit since we spend about 3x’s as much time together as most normal couples. The draw backs are that we have to treat each other with more respect and consideration then we might an employee. As a wife, I try to not nag Michael about things – and as a husband Michael tries to be mindful of not hurting my feelings when giving feedback. We’ve worked out many kinks in the beginning and it only helped our relationship become stronger overall. We now really hate spending too much time away from each other, since we aren’t used to it!
Q: Back to you both shooting film. Can you tell me a little bit about that? What you are using? What got you back into it and so on?
A: Film is a really important component to our style and work being set apart from the crowd. There is a texture, feel, depth and look to film that is unique and unlike digital. Our clients don’t necessarily know that we shoot film until we tell them – but they do know that they like whatever it is that we are doing. The more we shoot, the more we want to shoot film. Digital is amazing too, and we shoot that as well. Especially in a digitally saturated market, a bride is used to being offered a ton more photographs than even 5-6 years ago because of the “unlimited” capacities of digital. So its great to use both tools for different uses. Digital is also amazing for low lighting situations and creates amazing shots in its own right!
Q: Has shooting film benefited you from a niche market or workflow point of view?
A: Shooting film has benefited in terms of niche marketing, although most brides don’t know that we shoot film until we tell them. Once they know and are educated about the look of film its much harder for them to choose someone else who doesn’t provide that luxury. As far as workflow, there is an extra step in getting the film processed and scanned so we can add it to the digital files. But its worth it and an extremely simple process. We just mail out the film and it get’s mailed back to us process and scanned onto CD’s. In general, shooting film is about US being stoked about our work . You have to do what you love and are passionate about. If you do that, the work will follow.
Q: Who handles your film processing?
A: Color Services in Santa Barbara does our processing and they are simply amazing. A big component in our business is customer service and they exceed our expectations on a regular basis. They have never let us down in terms of rush orders or quality.
Q: What would you say a typical day in the live of the Costa’s would involve?
A: We are pretty nuts most of the time. We juggle our photo shoots, with everyday office workflow (getting events online, emails, business building tasks), blogging/online presence, managing our forum photoforthepeople.com as well as preparing for speaking presentations that we have a few times a year or more. We outsource most of our photo color corrections for our digital images and all of our Album Designing. We also outsource our print orders which are handled completely by Pictage.
Q: Can you talk to me about some of your favorite images and why they mean so much to you?
A: One of our favorite pictures is of a grandpa at this wedding sucking down his stoggie! We also love this shot of a little red headed ring bearer who was just too unique and adorable looking for words. We shot a wedding in Mexico awhile back that was literally a photographers dream. We have a bunch of photos from that wedding we love. We love NYC and have so many photos from there that we really love. Most of the work that stands out is because our clients allowed us the time to really play. When we are rushed on the wedding day, we will get great shots. But when the client puts a priority on photography and gives us time – that’s when the magic happens!
Q: Can you go through what equipment you are using…
A: We shoot the Contax 645, Canon EOS 1V, Canon 5D and have all the lenses/flashes etc….We are having fun playing with our new pocket wizards!
Q: Do you have anything special in the works or coming up that you would like to talk about?
A: We are working on a tool that we are hoping will automate our workflow and marketing. We are hoping to share it with others as well, so hopefully it will be up and running soon!
Q: Do you have any workshops or speaking engagements coming up?
A: We are speaking at the WPPI 2010 Business Institute. We are excited for that! We love speaking in Vegas!
Q: Would you like to give some props to your sponsors?
A: Of course! We LOVE Fuji Film, Queensberry Albums and Pictage!
Thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy day to speak with us. Keep up the great work guys!
