Meet Jesus Leyva

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jesus Leyva. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jesus, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

I think finding your purpose is a lifelong journey that changes as you gain more perspective and clarity the more you let yourself experience the world, different cultures, and overcome diversity. I’ve found my purpose a couple of times in my life, at a young age I learned how to play the drums and I told myself “This is my purpose, I’m going to be a famous musician”. I joined band and started perfecting my craft learned more instruments and kept playing music I thought I was on track to live to my purpose however one day I reached a point where I was deemed not good enough to keep moving forward by a college professor and it broke me I would think to myself “what am I going to do now, this was the one thing I was good at”. I hit rock bottom or so I thought when one day by chance I purchased an old film camera from New York for $20; I was instantly hooked I found my new purpose, showing how I saw the world through photos I eventually quit my corporate job and started full-time photography, met some incredible people and realized my real purpose wasn’t to show everyone how I saw the world but to highlight my culture and the people that felt like they didn’t have a voice to speak for themselves.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’ve been working on a couple of things since graduating college such as building my business AlienEgo and getting my name out there in the creative space more often. I’m an automotive photographer who loves highlighting all kinds of car builds in the community and showing the love and dedication behind every vehicle. My business AlienEgo is a clothing brand that mixes my worlds in photography and automotive culture and also helps other small brands fulfill their needs from stickers to shirts to be able to show off their creative ventures. If anyone wants to check out my work they can always go to AlienEgo.com for my latest clothing drop.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

There are a lot of great qualities that can help you navigate life, but for me, the three most important quails that have helped me in my journey are resilience, compassion, and ignorance. Resilience is important because challenging scenarios will always get in your way and try to stop you from achieving your goals but at the end of the day how bad do you want it? how bad do you crave it? For me, it’s a constant feeling I know I have to lock in and get to work to achieve the things I want to achieve in life before I regret settling. Compassion is something I’m still working on I used to selfishly worry about myself because I would think the generic “I’m just one person what am I going to do?” however, there are countless people you can help just by being understanding, and giving what you can to improve someone else’s quality of life. There are things in this world we can’t simply ignore like the genocide of people and the repression of the lower class, educate one another and be more understanding of our differences, free Palestine, stop corruption, and fight for an equal chance at life for one another. Lastly, ignorance is a quality that has helped me greatly because in my creative field, you’re told oh you can’t do their or do that or a clothing brand is supposed to have a logo because how else are people going to recognize your brand? I don’t abide by the same rules other creatives do because I don’t care to learn the rules and constrict myself in a box true creativity is doing what you want and expressing yourself as true as you can.

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

An ideal client for me would be someone who aligns with my door values and lets me have full creative freedom. I have gotten some of my work reposed by bigger brands such as McLaren but I would love to work more closely with them and other automotive brands to showcase how beautiful, complex, and elegant these machines are. I would love to work with brands such as Hoonigan and Top Gear to help share how incredible our automotive hobbies are and how incredible the people behind the vehicles are too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://AlienEgo.com
• Instagram: EyeofZusephoto

Image Credits

All photos are taken by Jesus Leyva