jicx studio is a small commercial photography studio . We make pictures for brands that care about craft — fashion houses, architecture practices, food magazines, and the kind of catalogues people keep on a shelf instead of in a folder.
We selected them because they each taught us something new, such as how to urge a subject to remain motionless or how to use a different light or short. See how each project was created by clicking through.
In 2024, two photographers and a producer who had worked as freelancers for four years in bengaluru, karnataka, kochi and created jicx. They were fed up with the fact that a fantastic brief was frequently reduced to the frame that the agency could accept the quickest. With a working group of seven, one in-house retoucher, two seasoned producers, and a pool of fifteen independent helpers we can confidently recommend, the studio is intentionally modest.
We work slower than the rate card. The output looks faster than the rate card. aswajith, founder
What that means in practice: we do fewer projects per quarter than most studios our size, we keep the same producer on a brand from the first call to the final delivery, and we ship a colour-managed gallery the day after the shoot — not the week after. Clients have called this "expensive when you book it, cheap when you ship it." That is, on reflection, exactly the right description.
Most studios pick a lane — fashion, food, architecture, product — and stay in it. We work across all five because the same lighting principles, the same colour discipline, and the same patience apply. The discipline is constant; the subject changes.
Magazine covers, story-led portrait essays, location-driven editorial. We light for the page, not the contact sheet — every frame is chosen and lit knowing where it lands in the layout.
For TYPE · Gentlewoman · CerealSS, FW, holiday — the full seasonal cadence with one continuous creative direction.
E-com pack-shots and elevated product still life, shipped retouched within 48 hours of capture.
Behind-the-bench, in-the-kiln, on-the-line — the work-of-making, told honestly.
A second crew, the same direction. We bring our own DP for hybrid stills-and-motion days.
An ICC-profiled grading pipeline, an in-house retoucher who has been with the studio since 2024, and a printer relationship in Banglore and kochi for any project that ends up on paper.
Calibrated to GRACoL · ISO 12647 · Adobe RGBA first call is twenty minutes and free, always with the producer who will run your project from start to finish. Most projects ship in three to six weeks; the bottleneck is almost never the shoot itself — it is the brief, the location lock, and the talent confirmation. We keep that gauntlet short by holding the kickoff in the first week, not the third.
Day 02 · kochiBanglore is a 280-square-metre daylight space in a converted printers' building in Greenpoint — north light, 4.6-metre ceilings, a working kitchen for food work, and a full grip kit. kochi is a smaller, 140-square-metre room in a Mitte ground floor — south light, polished concrete, and a calmer pace for editorial portraits and product. We move between the two rooms based on brief and time of year.
Greenpoint · NYCSelected, 2023–25
Short notes from the studio — sometimes a working note about a lighting setup, sometimes an opinion about colour management, sometimes a frame we kept thinking about long after delivery.
Soft does not have to mean flat. A working note about why a hard silk still beats a soft box for portrait work on a clear day.
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An argument for hiring your printer before you hire your retoucher. A note for studios scaling from solo into a working team.
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From the Atrium SS25 shoot — why the third frame in any sequence almost always reads the best, and what to do about it.
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