JC ALTAMIRANO · JOURNAL
Field Notes
Behind-the-scenes dispatches, press mentions & editorial commentary from the studio in Roma Norte.
Index · Volume 09
Recent dispatches
A working notebook from the studio — set reports, reading lists, and the conversations that shape a shoot before the shutter opens.
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A single-day editorial in Oaxaca, and what it taught us about pace
Twenty-two frames, one assistant, eight hours of light. Notes on the workflow that's quietly become our default for repeat clients — and why most campaigns don't need a five-day shoot.
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Mentioned in It's Nice That: on building a recognisable visual signature
A short conversation about why we cull every deliverable ourselves, why the archive holds 87,000 edited frames, and what "personal post-production" still means in 2026.
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Gelling in Lagos: three weeks, four covers, twenty-two rolls of Tri-X
A longer read from the Lagos Photo Festival masterclass — scouting at 5am, the casting room that became a set, and the one frame from the trip I almost didn't make.
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Named to PDN's 30 New Photographers to Watch — and what we kept private
A thank-you note from the studio, plus the four print submissions we held back, the ones we sent, and the editing principles behind a 380-assignment archive.
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As mentioned in
- Vogue México
- Wallpaper*
- It's Nice That
- Hypebeast
340+ published editorial pages since 2017 across 18 international titles — selected press and a complete clippings archive available on request.
Editor's note
A working notebook, not a content funnel.
The Journal is where the studio talks the way it talks on set — plainly, with the same discipline we bring to a cull. New entries land every three to four weeks: a set report from the most recent campaign, a paragraph on a piece of music we kept on loop during a shoot, a link to the magazine that ran our last cover, the occasional reading list.
It is not a content strategy. There is no schedule optimised for engagement. Most posts are written by hand between assignments in the Roma Norte studio, sometimes from a hotel room in week two of a foreign job. If a piece takes longer than a season to write, we leave it on the hard drive and try again next year.
Subscribers — clients, editors, friends — get a single email per issue, plain text, no tracking. Everything else is here, in chronological order, for anyone who finds it.
- 340+published editorial pages
- 18international titles
- 22countries photographed
- 4 wkaverage cadence
From the journal to the studio
Have an assignment worth writing about?
The Journal is a working notebook. The studio is where the work gets made. If you're planning a campaign, a cover, or a lookbook for the next quarter, the team in Roma Norte reads every brief that lands in the inbox.