Estevan Oriol: Don't Sweat The Technique (NEW INTERVIEW) *DOPE*

[Elano]

"I wasn’t planning any of it.  I was working the doors at clubs, doing the guest list and stuff," Estevan Oriol reflects about his impressive photography, clothing, and film career.  The man who's taken photos of folks such as Robert DeNiro and Al Pachino, Method Man and Snoop Dogg, directed music videos for Blink 182 and Paul Wall, and birthed an army of followers with his vivid pictures of L.A. ganglife was once working construction by day, and clubs by night.  It was an entrance meeting with Cypress Hill that forever changed his life, after they offerred him a spot as House of Pain's road manager. Estevan left the clubs and traveled the country with Everlast and co. ensuring that the group was able to "Jump Around" while not missing any press or promo spots. 

It is Estevan's calm, yet strong demeanor that allows him to prosper amongst gang bangers, Hip Hop artists, and record executives alike.   He explains, "They liked the way I carried myself cause I was nice and respectful to everybody, but at the same time I held my ground.  I wouldn’t let anybody s**t on me, or punk me at the door.". He also became a favorite of Mr. Cartoon and the two began a partnership that has brought forth Joker Brand Clothing, a branding company, and a feature film deal.  Not too bad for a self-taught ex-bouncer from L.A.  We caught up with Estevan for an exclusive interview to find out exactly how he did it .

RubyHornet:  I wanted to start the interview by talking a little bit about your start in photography.  Your bio starts with you working as a bouncer, and I’m wondering if that was a job you took just to make money while pursuing photography, or was all of what you’re doing now just a distant thought back then?
Estevan Oriol:  I wasn’t planning any of it.  I was working the doors at clubs, doing the guest list and stuff.  Sometimes I’d be in the VIP section, and I would DJ at some clubs afterwards, the illegal ones.  So I was doing all that and I met different people while working the door, because everybody had to go through me.  I met Cypress Hill, Boo Ya Tribe, Ice-T, Everlast, all of the L.A. Hip Hop scene to the DJ’s and all that.  In meeting Cypress Hill, they liked the way I carried myself cause I was nice and respectful to everybody, but at the same time I held my ground.  I wouldn’t let anybody s**t on me, or punk me at the door.  They were like, ‘hey man, would you like to work for us?’  And I said, ‘yeah.  Doing what?’  And they said, ‘as tour manager.  All you have to do is take the guys to the shows and make sure they do their interviews.'  I thought they meant Cypress Hill, but they meant House of Pain.  They told me, ‘it’s a new group coming out.  One of the guys is a rapper you might know from before, his name’s Everlast.  Meet us for dinner and we’ll see if it’s all good.’  I met them and Everlast said, ‘yeah, let’s do it.’  That summer we did a college tour, then we got on the Beastie Boys’ tour and did a set. At first I was just doing it for the expenses, they would pay my hotel room and food and things like that.  As we started getting paid, they started paying me.  I would do the club stuff at night and construction during the day.  I started doing photos as a hobby just for fun and before you know it, people started hiring me and stuff like that.

RubyHornet:  You said they liked you because of the way you handled yourself.  I’m sure that anyone that wants to do what you do now has to garner a certain amount of respect.  Are there times when you’ve been placed in rough situations, and how do you navigate those situations?
Estevan Oriol:  You have to use your street smarts.  You can’t be too pushy. At the end of the day, you’re in somebody else's neighborhood and you’re in a danger zone.  You just got a pass for what you’re there for and that’s it.  You don’t have to be scared, but you have to be aware and always stay on your toes.  You’re in somebody else’s hood, and if some s**t jumps off you got to be ready.  Like Cypress Hill says, ‘when the s**t goes down, you better be ready.’ 

RubyHornet:  Being that you’re documenting the culture as a participant and someone from the inside, do you feel that there are certain responsibilities that go along with that in terms of how you shoot people, and even mentoring others that you see in a similar place you were in during your younger days?
Estevan Oriol:  I don’t ever want my pictures to be evidence against somebody, or the reason why they get locked up.  If they pull out straps and stuff like that, I never shoot so you can see the serial numbers to where the feds could zoom in on a picture to read the numbers or whatever.  I’ve been shooting in neighborhoods before and the enemy neighborhood came and they had a shoot out, and the guys will be like, ‘hey, did you get all that?  Did you get those flicks?  That’s some real gangsta s**t.  That’s some real hood s**t.’  And I said, ‘no.’  And they go, ‘why not homie?  You wanted to get some gangsta s**t, and that’s as gangsta as it gets.’  I said, ‘If someone would have died and the cops came and I’m sitting here with my camera, they’ll take it as evidence and the reason why you’re getting life in prison is because of my pictures, what’s going to come back on me?  I don’t want you to say, ‘I’m doing life cause this motherf**ker over here was taking pictures. He’s a rat.’  But if I don’t do that s**t, then everybody has a fair chance.  I’m there as a guest.  I’m not there as a cop or to get anybody in trouble.

RubyHornet:  Going from shooting something like that, to shooting a calendar of beautiful women, to the work you do with music videos, you must have a real interesting view on reality and all the different worlds people are living in, from a Hollywood lifestyle to the streets of L.A.  Do you ever just sit back and think about how wide the world is and how many kinds of lives people are living?
Estevan Oriol:  It’s a trip.  I do videos and I see them trying to simulate the neighborhood s**t, and I see right through it and how fake it is.  You can tell when a real gangsta’s talking some real gangsta s**t.  I know the real gangstas.  When they do Hip Hop, they’re not real serious about it, it’s just something they do secondary.  The gangsta s**t is first, and they do the Hip Hop thing whenever they can.  Their first hustle in gang banging, and the music s**t comes after.  And you can tell which dude that is.  Some  Hip Hop dudes, they may be in the hood and around that s**t, but they’re not the one doing all the work and you can tell that they’re telling someone else’s story.  When they hold guns sideways in pictures, and they have their elbow up and they’re holding the gun sideways, I don’t know if those guys have ever been to a shooting range and have tried to hold their gun sideways or upside down, but that s**t don’t work.  That’s the reason why the cops and the army guys hold their guns the right way, cause that’s effective.  That’s why you see some gang fights where guys will shoot their whole mags, 13-20 bullets at a time and not hitting nobody, or hitting little kids, innocent people.  It’s because they don’t even know how to shoot the f**king guns.  They’re watching these movies and thinking that’s how you do it, and they got it twisted.

RubyHornet:  Speaking of shooting technique, what type of camera do you like to use?  Do you have an ace in the hole camera?
Estevan Oriol:  I shoot with a variety of camera, but my baby is a Cannon A1.  I have this little instamatic camera that I’ll take out to events cause it has a flash.  I also have the Pentax 672 for when I want to impress somebody, or show off to a record label.  They like to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth, and if I just took my Cannon A1 they’d be like, ‘what the f**k?’  Terry Richardson could show up with a Yasika T4, and pop off shots like $70-$100,000 a day and they won’t say s**t in the fashion world.  In the record industry they want to see a big camera, 100 lights to do the same shot I could do with my Cannon A1 with no lights.

RubyHornet:  In terms of your growth, what has your growth been like, and what do you do to ensure you keep getting better?  Is there any technique that you’ve picked up along the way that might be a little thing, but has made a big difference in the quality of your photos?
Estevan Oriol:   Basically, I always just shot by myself and I really didn’t use assistants.  I was always forced to do everything myself, on my own.  Doing everything on my own, I was under the pressure and I didn’t have anyone else to fall back on, or to blame for a f**k up.  I just had to bust it out, do everything, be fast, and be efficient.  That was the best thing I’ve learned doing the whole photo thing.  I didn’t go to photo school or anything like that.  When you’re in photo school, you go there, you got the teacher to help you and you have classmates to help you.  ‘How do you do this, and how do you do that?  Teacher, teacher, can you help me?’ and all that s**t.  But when you’re on the street in the middle of 20 homeboys and they all have AK’s and 9mm and you’re in the park and there’s helicopters flying around, you don’t have time for none of that s**t.  You’re there with Robert DeNiro and Al Pachino and they say, ‘Ok, you got 15 minutes.’  And you shoot one roll of ten things and they thank you, and you’re like, ‘wait, that’s only two minutes.  Can I shoot another roll?’  And you shoot another half a roll, and they’re like, ‘Ok, thank you very much,’ and they walk away.  You’re under pressure and you don’t have time to fiddle with a bunch of crap.  The best thing for me was just learning how to do everything myself with no help.  Sometimes on jobs when I have a budget and I can have assistants come around, that helps, but I’m so used to doing everything on my own that I don’t need anybody or nothing.  I can just take my Cannon A1, take the 20, 35, and 50 mm lens, ten rolls of color, ten rolls of black & white, and that’s my crew.  I’ll do jobs like Snoop Dogg and they’re paying a lot of money, they want a lighting truck, I have a first assistant, a second assistant, and third assistant, I can do all that the same.  When you’re working by yourself, you’re in complete control and you know what you need to do and what not to do.  When you have assistants you have to do what you’re doing and direct them and watch what they do.  You have to be the crew leader.  It’s the same amount of work cause now you have more people and more s**t going on.  You got the grip truck, the craft services, the publicist, the record label and all these people you got to keep happy.  So it’s almost bad not having to hold all this s**t myself, change the cameras and lenses myself, but now I got to make sure these 3 executive are happy, and make sure these 5 guys are doing what they’re supposed to do, put the mics where they’re supposed to be…it’s pretty much the same amount of work. 

RubyHornet:  Being in the situations you’ve been in, you must have nerves of steel.  How did it compare shooting Robert DeNiro vs. the street stuff?  Do you ever get nervous or star struck?
Estevan Oriol:  No.  I just told him, ‘look over here and don’t move.  Let me get my shot and then you can go along and handle your business.  The more f**king around you do, the more you’re going to waste both of our time.  If you just get in there, stand on your mark, and do what I tell you to do, everything’s going to be OK.’  I’m a photographer, but at that point I’m the director.  I got to take control and show him who’s boss…But, I’m just kidding…f**k yeah I was nervous!  They’re my idols.  I’ve been watching their movies for 30 something years, and I’ve seen pretty much every movie that both of them have done.  To have them in front of my camera…The day that I shot them it was cold outside, I had my two Cannon A1’s in one bag, and my two Pentax cameras in another bag.  I picked up my one Cannon A1 and tried to fire it off and nothing happened.  I pushed the other one and nothing happened.  I got the Pentax 67 and that finally worked.  I was in a panic zone right there.

RubyHornet:  You just talked about teaching yourself and learning on your own.  Coming up in the early 90’s, were you familiar with some of your counterparts on the East Coast like Joe Conzo Jr. or Ricky Powell  or other street photographers?
Estevan Oriol:  I’ve seen all their work.  They’re all dope, but I always keep my stuff as my stuff.  I stay original and doing my thing cause I know what it’s like to have people biting your s**t, and it’s not a good feeling.  They say imitation is a form of flattery, but I don’t see it like that.  I see it as ripping you off and claiming the fame.  People copy a lot of my s**t.  The first 100 times I saw it I thought, ‘oh this is real flattering, and real cool.’  I got real spiritual about it.  But after the 100th time it started burning me out like, ‘can’t these motherf**kers take any other kind of picture?’  There’s 100 people on Myspace on the internet trying to do what I do.  It’s cute when you’re little brother tries to wear your clothes and dress up like you.  It’s kind of funny, but then you get to a point like, ‘f**k.’  The clothing industry starts ripping off your designs, and starting jewelry lines…when is enough enough?

RubyHornet:  I know you work closely with Mr. Cartoon.  Is there a common approach that you both take with your craft that ties you guys together or has made you guys bond so well?
Estevan Oriol:  I think it’s just that we both grew up in L.A. around the same type of stuff that we know it from the inside.  It’s authentic.  What I do and what he does is art, and completely different forms of art, so my approach is different than his approach. 

RubyHornet:  Is there a way you guys feel about art in general that you guys share?
Estevan Oriol:  We’re both real proud of being original, and being able to work the old school craft.  There’s a million guys that can get on a computer and design something.  They can take people’s art off the internet, but how many of these guys are really artists?  How many can get a pen and a piece of paper, a tattoo machine, or an air brush, or a spray paint can and really put it down like that?  Cartoon’s one of those guys that can do that.  For me, I really work the camera.  I can shoot film or digital, I can do 16mm or 8mm or an HD camera.  I can handle it all, and I know how to load the film and all that s**t.  I know how to do the craft the old school way.  We both feel real strong about that.

RubyHornet:  I know you recently put out a very smooth calendar featuring very beautiful L.A. women.  What was the inspiration for the settings and shots you chose?
Estevan Oriol:  I’ve been shooting girls for a long time, since I started.  I was on tour with Cypress Hill as their tour manager, and that’s where I started shooting girls.  You go on the road, and I’m taking pictures of backstage stuff and live shows and the cities that we go to.  At some of these shows you meet girls that want to party with the band, you know, off the hook pretty girls.  I was like, ‘hey, can I take a picture of you?’  And they would say, ‘yeah, no problem.’  They were all happy just to be hanging out.  So I started building this collection of girls, and I’d get home and see girls around L.A. and think, ‘man, I got to shoot them too!’  Then I started thinking, I never get hired to shoot girls, but I like shooting them.  So I figured, ‘what’s the way I could get to do that?’  I always had men, everything was all f**king men.  It started looking kind of weird.  Cartoon was tattooing all these men, and I was taking pictures of all these men, and doing videos of all these men, rappers, street dudes, low-riders.  We weren’t really getting out there with the girls.  I was telling my wife, ‘it looks funny that all we have is men on all our s**t.’  Look at Snoop and Dre and all them, those dudes are married and they got girls in all their s**t.  Look at where it’s taken them, it blew them up and they’re even talking s**t about the women in there...So, we needed that balance…That brought on me shooting more and more girls.  I had all these pictures of girls, and music, and street dudes, the one thing that I don’t really have out there a lot is just the women.  I needed to put myself out there more to shoot that stuff.  So I came out with that calendar, and that lead to doing a book called L.A. Woman.  That’s a coffee table book that I’m putting out through Drago Publishing in Italy.  The calendar is a sample of what the book is gonna be, and I put out these playing cards that are a sample of what the tattoo book I’m doing is, and what the book is.  I just tied it all together, and I put out shirts with the same imagery to just build the brand.

RubyHornet:  As far as the brand, I know you have SA Studios Agency.  When companies come to you, what are they looking for?  I know you guys specialize in reaching the Hispanic Urban marketplace.  Do companies come to you with misconceptions about reaching that market that you find yourself  erasing?
Estevan Oriol:  Yeah.  They come to us thinking we can just do things with bald heads and tattoos.  Everybody only thinks I can shoot Mexican guys with tattoos.  They’re like, ‘oh, you can shoot Black people too?’  I go, ‘yeah.  Did you see the Snoop Dogg and all those pictures?  Xzibit, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, J-Rocc…’  And they go, ‘you shot all those?’  And I say, ‘yeah.  I shot all those. I can shoot women.  I can shoot cars.  I can even shoot white people.’  It’s crazy.  I can shoot f**king anything.  I can shoot a pencil.  I can shoot a book.  I can shoot a building.  I can shoot people f**king, people fighting, people playing in a band, backstage kids kicking it in the dressing room.  I can shoot people in their house doing dope, people in prison.  I can shoot people in a coffin.  I can do it all.  I don’t understand.  People still to this day, when I show them all my pictures they say, ‘did you shoot that?’  And after I shake them a little bit, I just want to tell them, ‘why would I show you some pictures that I f**king didn’t take?’  I want to say all that but I’m like, ‘yeah, yeah.  I shot all that.’

RubyHornet:  Going from bouncer to tour manager, to director, designer, it seems like all of them require you to understand people, relate to them, and then exhibit a great amount of patience.  Would you say that’s true, and is your biggest strength relating to people?
Estevan Oriol:  My biggest strength is holding back.  Every once in a while I have this small little sign of turrets come through, and I’ll say something and be like, ‘man, I can’t believe I just said that s**t.’  But, sometimes they just bring it out of you.  You can’t even control it.  Most of the time I keep it under control and stay nice and polite and respectful.  Every once in a while I’ll slip out a little something, but I’ll twist it up and make it funny.  You got to be on point.  When you slip or fall, you play it off.  It’s the same thing when you’re talking to people.  When you slip, you got to play it off and act like you meant to do that.

RubyHornet:  I was reading your biography, and it was really a trip reading all the things you’re involved in and what you’ve accomplished.  Where I’ve seen people falter is in not presenting themselves in the right way, and trying to present everything at one time.  They may meet someone once and want to put everything out there, rather than let it naturally come out.  I guess it’s a skill that you’ve mastered in being patient and presenting yourself right.
Estevan Oriol:  Well, you never really know.  You got to feel people out.  Some people, you’ll just tell them a little bit and they won’t think you can do it cause the things you told them weren’t what they wanted you to do.  So you got to feel it out to be like, ‘well, did I tell them enough?’  And then you got to say, ‘well, I can also do this if you need.’  Some people will be like, ‘it seems like you do too much, like you’re too scattered.  You’re a jack of all trades, but a master of none.’  That’s kind of why when people ask me, ‘when are you going to do a record label?  When are you going to do music?’  I’m like, ‘oh, f**k.  I got my plate full already.  I need to do more photography, more videos, more filmmaking.’  That’s what I need to do, and do it on a higher level.  I’m putting out the same work as all these big guys are doing.  I can focus and push the buttons just as good as them.  I’m working with the same celebrities as them, but I don’t get the same rates as them.  They’re in a different realm.  I mentioned Terry Richardson and David  LaChapelle, and those types of guys.  Those guys don’t come out of the house for less than $70,000.  I’m coming out for way less than that, and we shoot all the same people.  I just need to step up my rate. 

RubyHornet:  The things you talked about, the control, do you think reaching that level of David LaChapelle and Terry Richardson, you’d have to give up some of the control?
Estevan Oriol:  No.  Not control, money.  I never had an agent that got me work that I got paid for.  I’ve had two agents that got me free editorial work, and they handle jobs that would come in for me.  Like I would meet somebody and say, ‘yeah, I can do your album cover.  Talk to my agent.’  They would handle it from there.  But I never had an agent out there grinding for me and trying to make me money.  They want 25%.  I don’t think they deserve it really.  All they’re doing is getting on the phone and answering phone calls.  I’m in the f**king jungles of Panama risking my life, and meeting and shooting Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino on my own.  Managers for bands get like 10%.  A venue is bringing 20,000 people to see your concert, and they sell your t-shirts for you, and they do all the work, and they’re supplying you with the place to have all these people come, they take 18%-20%.  Why the f**k does a photography agent take 25%?  What are they doing for 25%? 

RubyHornet:  I guess they feel like they’re gatekeepers.  The machine needs that to keep itself going.  It’s like the institution, you got to know the right people.  But people like you show that you can get around that.  You’re going the long way.
Estevan Oriol:  I’ve met some agents that come around and they just get intimidated cause they see our warehouse and our clothing company, our store, our cars, and they’re just like, ‘f**k.  What can I do for him?’  But this is 13 years of building, working, not making money but putting more into all this s**t.  If I just got rid of all this s**t and had a little office like a normal dude, it would look cool.  I’d be paid, but we went and got these warehouses and built lowriders, and stores, and made clothing companies and all this s**t.  It made us look like we got this big a** empire, and that we’re rich.  Actually, we’re just keeping the lights on.  There’s a lot of s**t going on and it’s spread out.

RubyHornet:  It’s really crazy cause coincidentally, right after the interview with you, I have an interview with Everlast.  I was wondering if you’ve heard any of his new work, and the direction he’s taken with the Whitey Ford albums.  Back when you were the road manager in the 90’s, would you have envisioned him doing what he’s doing musically right now?
Estevan Oriol:  I haven’t heard any of his new stuff, cause now we’re all busy. Before I was his dude that would do everything for him.  Because I was the tour manager, and they didn’t want to tour anymore, I was f**ked.  I would only get paid when he was on tour.  When they stopped touring and didn’t want to tour no more, I was said, ‘f**k.  What am I going to do?’  So I had to step up my hustle on the photography, the videos, and the clothing.  All those dudes put us on the map.  They were down for the homies and they would always hire friends.  Some people say, ‘don’t hire your friends for business.’  They would say, ‘f**k that.  I want to be on tour with my friends and have fun, and go around the world with my friends instead of a bunch of dudes I don’t know.’  Guys that go on tour, the working type of dudes, they just talk s**t about the bands.  ‘This motherf**ker this, this motherf**ker that…’ and then they work hard and complain the whole time.  Guys on video crews and s**t like that, you only meet them that one time, you don’t have no relationship or bond or anything with them.  But they’re good at what they do, cause that’s what they do.  But the whole time they’re sniveling about it.  If you’re not in that industry, it’s hard to explain.  Those guys, they didn’t want any of that.  They were like, ‘let’s train one of the homies to do the lights.  Let’s train one of the homies to do the sound and be the merchandise guy and all that.’  They put a lot of people on, a lot friends.  They brought a lot of friends on the road, and a lot of the guys didn’t work.  A lot of the guys thought, ‘well, I’m here with the homies.  I don’t have to bust my a**.  F**k that.’  And that is the wrong attitude.  Whereas, me and Cartoon saw it as an opportunity to do something bigger.  To take the ball and run with it.  We didn’t expect people to do s**t for us, and give us a rapping deal or s**t like that.  I was like, ‘can I shoot some pictures?  What do you think about that?  I don’t need to shoot the album cover, but can I shoot some publicity photos and submit them and try to see if they’ll use them.’  He’d be like, ‘yeah.  F**k yeah.  Try to get them in there.’  Then when we were doing the first video for B-Real’s side group, Psycho Realm,  I was like, ‘because the songs are your vision, you should write the treatment and have the directors do your treatment.  You wrote the song, and then you get the co-directing credit like Cube and Dre were doing.’  He said, ‘you’re the photo guy, why don’t you do that s**t.’  And he put me on with them.  He went to the label and said, ‘I don’t want anybody to do it.  I want him to do it.’  The dudes from Psycho Realm got me my first video, and then the label gave me the second one, then Sen gave me one, and then Muggs gave me two, and then Cypress gave me two.  So when I went out into the industry to try to hustle work, I had 7 videos under my belt.  That’s from the homies hooking me up.  But it wasn’t like they just gave me s**t.  I had to bust my a** and make it happen.  If I didn’t have something cool, they wouldn’t have done it.  They would have been like, ‘holmes, it’s not quite there yet.’  Cartoon used to do logos and tattoos and ended up getting  album cover work out of it.  B-Real showing his tattoos off got the Goodie Mob over there, then Outkast and it took off from there.  Now he’s doing everybody and their mom…But the question was about Everlast.

RubyHornet:  His new music is way different than House of Pain.  Could you predict that he would go that route?
Estevan Oriol:  I always knew that he could because he’s full of talent.  That guy is just a talented dude.  He has his moods and s**t like that, but as far as an artist and musician, he’s sick.  You hear what he does.  He’s f**king dope.  For him, I think the hard thing is just working with some of the people out there cause they do ignorant s**t, and they act dumb and they don’t take responsibility for f**king up and they’re scandalous people out there.  Accountants try to get you twisted.  There’s all kind of scandalous people in the game.  That gets him frustrated.  But when it comes to just sitting down and playing a guitar, rapping, or singing, he’s sick with it.

RubyHornet:  Before you go, tell our readers a little bit about what you have coming out, and some places people can look for you.
Estevan Oriol:  They can come see me at our store at the Last Laugh on 6th and Los Angeles.  I’m there a couple days out of the week.  I roll in there and check on the guys and all of our s**t.  If people are in the store and want something signed, I sign it for them.  I learned that from House of Pain and Cypress Hill.  Those guys never ever turned a fan away.  They never treated anybody sh**ty.  Press people, the crews in the venues, they were open to everybody.  That’s what I learned from them.  I take that onto the business that I do now...They can check out the L.A. Woman book coming out on Drago Publishing in Italy.  It’ll be on the website.  I got a Cartoon book that just came out, and I got a book on tattoo culture.  The whole thing of documenting Cartoon when he first started tattooing up until now.  The title was going to be Ink.  We turned down all those realities shows, and then they came out with Ink this, Ink that, and all kinds of s**t and really burned the name out.  So, we don’t want to put the name out there, cause we don’t want 5 realities shows and 10 clothing lines named after it before we can get it out there.  We’re keeping it under the cover for right now. I just shot a Tech9 video for the song, ‘Like Yeah.’...People can go on our websites and blogs (MisterCartoon.com, EstevanOriol.com).  People can keep tabs on us through that…

[djrazeone]

wheres this from....about to read it

[Elano]

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ruby hornet

[Elano]