To me, chaos is the ultimate stimulation. The chaos of public places, the chaos of dancing in a mosh pit, the chaos of the streets— this is when I have the opportunity to exercise my faculties and strengths.
When should we fly solo, and when should we fly together?
A simple goal in our artistic lives: Never stop creating new art works, pieces, essays, projects, and concepts! Never stop shooting photos Never stop writing essays, blog posts, poems, books Never stop drawing, painting, sculpting, designing, and building Never stop building your personal strength and muscles Never stop making music, and never stop dancing Never…
It seems self-evident that composition in photography is essential. But why?
Outlast Ignore the past, present and future Outlast You’re in a class of all your own.
It seems as a society we have deemed hoarding (physical things) as a bad thing. But what about hoarding digital things? Shouldn’t we also propose a more minimalist approach to our digital lives?
A thought: What if we made our body the priority, not our “mind”? Would this make us happier, more powerful, more excited, more inspired, more motivated, and more epic? I think so.
Do you desire to become formed, or do you desire to do the forming?
Don’t miss out the upcoming SF StreetFoto International Street Photography Festival — to hype it up, here is an interview with Ken Walton, the founder and visionary:
A thought: Nowadays with the great image quality with phone cameras, what is the purpose of a “standalone” digital camera — which is often bulkier, heavier, and less convenient to use?
Is there an upside to deleting our files and photos, instead of just backing everything up?
A simple way to feel happier, more empowered, and more epic in life: Whenever possible, create things instead of simply purchasing or consuming them. For example, it is cooler and more fun to restore an old school car and make it look dope, than to just buy the newest sports car. More fun to take…
A simple guide to simplify your shooting, processing, and sharing photographic workflow:
To “decide” as meaning cutting away superfluous options. Easiest way to decide to do something is what to decide NOT to do.
Piet Mondrian is one of my favorite artists and thinkers/philosophers.
The most ripe area for photographic innovation: discovering new compositions for your photographic artwork.
Great photo compositions are dynamic, motivate you to move, have a dynamic balance/harmony of proportions in the frame, and simple+elegant.
A game: something which is fun, done for the sake of it. A child as playing, as building sandcastles by the beach, to only have it be washed away by the ocean (Heraclitus), yet not feeling “sad” that the artwork is impermanent.
I was on Google Photos today, looking at all these old photos from the past. Old friends, old loves, etc — and it was kind of a strange experience. Here are all these people I haven’t thought about in years, or perhaps even a decade — but with unlimited free cloud storage for photos/videos— social…
Why have status symbols? We all know what status symbols are (fancy clothes, expensive cars, fancy watches, etc)— but my question is this: Why have status symbols? Why publicly display totems of “success” to others? Why signal your status-level to others?
Muda: Japanese concept of superfluous waste (comes from the Toyota lean manufacturing concept).
Experiments with Xiaomi 9 SE with “night sight” camera mode during the day.
Simple tips to get you going!
A simple way to live life: Never stop challenging yourself — always strive to become stronger, become deeper, become harder, more profound, with greater challenges and tasks which interest you!
Listen to your body more than your mind More wisdom in the body than the mind.
My thought — The ultimate end or apex activity is for us to make art! And the ultimate state for us to achieve is to become a hybrid of both philosopher AND artist.
Let’s think beyond — More fun with image collages — the greater joy seeing sets of images with a dynamic balance of consistency and variety.
I was at a really nice park the other day, enjoying the sound of chirping birds, water rushing, the cool breeze in the shade, and looking up at the trees and sky and I thought to myself: Wow, the blue shade of the sky is actually quite ugly. Which made me wonder — What are…
How to distinguish yourself — why distinguish yourself ? Substantive individualism Individualism with substance Are you a real unique person — or a permutation of random fragments? Are you an algorithmically generated person? Can your conversations be recreated by someone else? Do your opinions belong to you, or are you parroting what you’ve heard by…
It seems as a society we are becoming overly fat (apparently the new term isn’t “overweight, but “overfat”– as there are a lot of athletic people with lots of muscle who are technically “overweight”). I like the notion of “over-fat”, because it addresses the big challenge we face as a society right now (also from…
The hacker ethos: the ethos of “hacking” together the resources you already have//the opportunity to innovate a new approach (which might be superior to an easier approach of just buying anything new).
Life as beyond survival; it is about thrivival! We desire to thrive. To become bigger, stronger, more epic. There isn’t a final destination. The goal is to keep thriving and striving until the day you die. Never stop reaching higher for (beyond) the heavens! ERIC
Kill Bill 2: as epic as the first. Truly epic film.
Currently in the works: Henri Neck Strap PYTHON Edition. Uber-limited. Email hapticindustries@gmail.com to be put on the list.
If you’re a photographer that wants to harness the great powers of social media (yet hate the traditional forms of social media like Facebook/Instagram), arsbeta.com is for you.
Wouter Vanhees: Although I live in Hanoi, I travel to Ho Chi Minh City regularly for work. At night, when my meetings and work stuff is finished, I like to explore the inner city to do street photography with my Ricoh GR2.
An idea: Perhaps the optimal solution in life isn’t to “choose” only one between two things. It is to choose the best of both (or multiple) options. A hybrid/mixed/variageted approach to life. For example: Hybrid approach to phones: Own both an iPhone and a Google Pixel (or Android device). Have best of both worlds; because…
Good pain as growing pains. The pain you get from “delayed onset muscle soreness”. The pain of artistic and creative growth; painful, yet a good pain stimulus to our personal growth!
The only noble type of productivity is artistic productivity.
The joy of composing things — Composing music Composing essays Composing photographs Perhaps this is what makes photography so fun and joyful? And what’s the driving force of the artist?
KILL BILL Volume 1 (available on Netflix) — man, I totally forgot how great of a director/story-writer Quentin Tarantino is. Also spectacular Uma Thurman performance, Lucy Liu, and the whole cast:
I’ve been shooting a lot with the Xiaomi 9 SE recently (my new favorite phone-camera). The interesting thing is this: Perhaps the future of disruption in photography is this: cameras that also happen to be phones. In other words — we shouldn’t think of them as phones with good cameras. We should think of good…
A simple thought about artistic productivity: Just make stuff, then share them!
I think a lot of us are striving towards freedom. We want ‘location independence‘ (freedom), we want ‘financial independence‘ (freedom), and we want freedom of speech. But once we have all the freedoms we need (social freedom, political freedom, economic freedom)– then what?
One of my goals in life (my personal Elysium) was to become “financially independent” and to “retire early”. At age 31, I’ve reached my goal. But I haven’t been rewarded that “eternal bliss” I’ve falsely believed in. I don’t wake up everyday feeling eternally blessed and grateful. Instead, there seems to be this mysterious void…
My personal definition of a photo essay is an attempt to analyze a place, through images.
For myself, one of the things I hate the most is feeling tired and fatigue. I’m striving in my life to simply have the maximum amount of energy, with the minimum amount of fatigue (unless it is time for me to sleep at night).
A thought: Owning too much stuff is a “net negative”. Better to own a few things than many things. But then begs us the question: What few things should I allow into my life? Some thoughts: I haven’t really discovered a good definition of “high quality”or “great” goods yet. It seems the best definition is…
The only photos worth shooting are the ones which directly show your soul. Photos that have your soul embedded into them!
A thought: Why is it that we idolize things (cars, objects, devices, homes, stuff)? Shouldn’t we be idolizing people and their character-traits instead?