Chicago News Weekly, VIBES

One shoot, one couch. A poet, a singer, a furniture designer, a studio owner, an urban ecologist, a painter, and a photographer. Each needed a portrait that could carry a feature page alone. The cover needed all seven at once.

Thirty minutes before the shoot, the location changed. The group portrait was made in a different space than the one planned, with Raji standing in it. Every subject was shot against the same set, so seven separate feature pages still read as one issue when you turn through them. What holds it together is not a filter or a frame. It is the same room, the same light, and seven people given the same attention.

“You got to be able to adapt and bring in positive vibes to a scenario that might be unconventional or not ideal.”

Raji Vela, ROQA Productions

One portrait per feature page, and the frame that ran on the cover.

(The cover)

Made after the location changed, with Raji in it. Seven people, one couch, one frame.

Cover photography
Raji Vela, ROQA Productions
Chicago News Weekly, Vol 05 No 01

A publication does not buy photographs. It buys a photography license: a written permission to use named images, in named places, for a named length of time. ROQA keeps the copyright and the raw files, the publisher gets the use they actually need, and the credit line runs with the image.

What was licensed

A defined set of selects from one session: the cover frame and one portrait for each of the seven feature pages.

Where it runs

Editorial use by Chicago News Weekly: the print cover, the feature pages, the digital edition, and the paper’s own promotion of that issue.

What stays with ROQA

Copyright, the raw files, and the right to show the work here. Extensions, additional images, or a wider buyout are quoted separately.

Cover photography, Raji Vela, ROQA Productions · Chicago News Weekly, Vol 05 No 01, 24 September 2026

The Christian Mitchell cover story ran earlier in September, also photographed by ROQA. Licensing a single frame, or commissioning a sitting of your own, both start on the photography licensing page.