May 15, 2017

Meet Jonathan Cortes of Royal Focus in Boyle Heights

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonathan Cortes.

Jonathan, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started taking photos at High school when my father got me a camera from the flea market to take pictures for my homework. I was always watching movies and books with pictures from unreachable places and those were my favorites, I wanted to be there and I wanted to show people this mystical places from all over world, so I started using my camera to take pictures of friends and family and suddenly I became the official photographer everywhere I was. I enjoyed it so much that I enrolled in the photography school and created my own dark room in the laundry room, my mom was so upset about it and she still is. A couple of years after that event I decided to move to a city where I could grow as an artist so I decided to move to Los Angeles, where I attended to Los Angeles City College and met a lot of people in the industry who were always willing to help me with advices. I started to help in different productions which help me find my own way and take the decision to start my own small company for events and private portraits.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I would say it hasn’t been easy. I never expected to be living in Los Angeles and do I what do and 7 years later I’m still thinking how I came here. I guess as an artist we all have several struggles but is up to us to keep in the race. One of the biggest decisions I have taken was to leave my job to follow my dream without knowing if there will be a reward at the end, but sometimes it just feels right.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Royal Focus – what should we know?
Royal focus has a concept to create images in which every client participates in the visualization of the project to create this unique look that everybody is looking for.

We specialize on weddings and sweet sixteen but we also all kinds of portraits and commercial headshots.

As a company what make us different is that we love what we do and is our passion, we feel like we work with you to create something that we both we will be proud of.

A lot of our customers come telling us that they want to get something different and want someone that they can trust, as a company this is one of our concerns and we definitely try to get that connection before taking any job.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I would say there are few, but one that have helped me during the years is that I’m a dreamer. I never gave up, I always keep trying and trying and when I get tired, I tried harder. I guess, I learned that, because I somehow I believe in dreams and I think that if you fight for what you want, sooner or later you will get it, maybe not exactly what you are looking but sometimes it could be even better, if not, ask my wife.

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