Natale Sandoli has a photographer’s eye for detail and a quick sense of humor. He arrived in Tenerife nearly forty years ago with his wife and the determination to build something from scratch. Born in Venezuela with Italian blood and Caribbean roots, he’s spent decades capturing small, easily missed moments at weddings, baptisms, communions, and in everyday family life. His father hoped he’d pursue an academic path, but Natale always knew art was his calling. University itself didn’t leave much of an impression on him, except for one thing: it’s where he met his wife.

Faith came later, and by an unexpected route. He wasn’t a practicing Catholic; he says that Mass bored him, and he’d look for any excuse to skip it. Through a friend, he was introduced to Opus Dei and found his way back to a life of faith. When someone lent him a copy of The Forge, what he found in its pages left him speechless: it felt as though it had been written specifically for him, he says, and he couldn’t understand how St. Josemaría could have known so much about him when he wrote the book nearly a century earlier.

Some time later, he asked to be admitted as a supernumerary of Opus Dei. Since then, he’s worked harder at being a better husband, father, and friend, and at bringing that same sense of purpose into his photography. That commitment shows up even in the studio: an alarm reminds him to pray the Angelus at noon, and when it happens to go off during a shoot, he prays it right there in front of his clients. Some parents join him, he says; others don’t. Either way, he believes that it’s a way of planting seeds of faith.

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He’s open about his struggle with vanity, facing it with the same directness that defines him. Asked if he has any regrets, he says, “just two:” not having discovered all this earlier, and that so many people have yet to discover St. Josemaría. “So many people are missing out,” he says, “on something that could bring them so much joy.”