Former club bouncer and Los Angeles native Estevan Oriol got his start in the entertainment business managing tours for huge artists like “House of Pain” and “Cypress Hill” almost 20 years ago. While globe trotting with them he began his photography career taking flicks of the madness and glitter that surrounds international celebrities. When he was back home in L.A though, it was a much different story. He took his cues from the street life surrounding him. The singular dramatic black and white photos he produces are gripping, beautiful, and authentically menacing portraits of individuals fully immersed in L.A gang lifestyle. Blessed with a talented eye and a hood pass, he takes pictures in places armed with a camera where most tough guys would take a weapon. Offered for the first time to the public for free, in this exclusive interview from The Run Up, Estevan Oriol expresses his thoughts, methods, and views on approaching everyday with the hunger of a hustler who doesn’t know where his next meal will come from.

Not sure how I missed this, but here it is. Aspiring artists please pay close attention…everything ain’t always what it seems. Props to Q-Tip for being a true artist.

Spotted over at Friends We Love, Posterboy speaks about the inspiration behind his work, speaking through artistic expression, and the future of Posterboy.

Click inside to see some of Posterboy’s work…

This is by far one of my favorite vlogs from Jay over at Illdoctrine.
This video is a mandatory must see for anybody who is ambitious (or awake as I call it). Watch this once a day if you have to….I do (??).

1. Experience things fully, vividly, selflessly. Throw yourself into the experiencing of something: concentrate on it fully, let it totally absorb you
2. Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth): Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.
3. Let the self emerge. Try to shut out the external clues as to what you should think, feel, say, and so on, and let your experience enable you to say what you truly feel.
4. When in doubt, be honest. If you look into yourself and are honest, you will also take responsibility. Taking responsibility is self-actualizing.
5. Listen to your own tastes. Be prepared to be unpopular.
6. Use your intelligence, work to do well the things you want to do, no matter how insignificant they seem to be.
7. Make peak experiencing more likely: get rid of illusions and false notions. Learn what you are good at and what your potentialities are not.
8. Find out who you are, what you are, what you like and don’t like, what is good and what is bad for you, where you are going, what your mission is. Opening yourself up to yourself in this way means identifying defenses – and then finding the courage to give them up.

Ok, check out my dude Maleonn from Shanghai. He’s a photographer that dropped everything (day job/financial security) to chase his dream (yea!). Be sure to read his inspirational interview over at Scoute. And dont forget to go into work tomorrow and quit (I am not responsible for anything that happens after that).

and those who graduated will appreciate this video. This is called “A Vision of Students Today” by Michael Wesch. This short video summarizes some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. 

This one is for all my fellow entrepreneurs….if you’re having a bad case of fighting negative thoughts then be sure to read this. Shout out to Chris over at Zengasm for this one.

Top 10 tips for facing failure:

1. Failure is normal. Everyone has faced failure. Some people talk about their failures. Some people don’t talk about their failures, which makes it look like they never fail. Don’t believe it.

2. Define or refine. Failure can define you or refine you. If you quit, you have allowed failure to define you. If you keep going, learn from it and get stronger, you have used failure to refine yourself.

3. Learn from it. Every failure has something to teach us, if we will only be teachable. To be teachable, we need to ask good questions such as “What contributed to this failure?” or “What can I do differently and/or better next time?”

4. Change your definition of failure. We live in an either/or culture. Either you totally succeed or you completely fail. Many times it’s neither.

5. Redefine what failure means to you. A failure is simply evidence that you took a shot at accomplishing something, that you want to be a doer instead of just a talker.

6. Successful people fail often. How can you be successful and fail often? You become successful by taking risks. Risk implies that you might fail. Otherwise it would not be called risk-taking; it would be called sure-thing taking.

7. Build on your failures. Many of the great success stories are built on what was learned from failure or the motivation that can come from failure.

8. Don’t fear failure. The of failure holds us back from doing many of the things we would like to do.

9. Give up your belief in failure. A wise person once said, “Failure? I’ve never encountered it. I’ve just learned lots and lots of ways that don’t work, and turned that into a few successes.”

10. Never, ever give up. An ancient Japanese proverb suggests that we are to “fall down seven times, get up eight.”