Month: August 2019

JUNWOO KIM is the inventor of ARS COIN, and a talented visual artist, engineer, and a good friend.

Allen Iverson said it best: practice.

Perhaps this is the goal: not to become the “best” or even to become “successful”, but to simply never stop practicing whatever your art form is!

Something fun in entrepreneurship, business and life is trying to accomplish “proof of concept”, whether or not your idea works in the real world.

A realization in life:

Considering how short our lives are, it seems to be a waste of time, life, and energy to focus too much on small and petty lifestyle choices.

Better to focus on your big, massive, and audacious goal in life, and ignore the small and petty.

This means, don’t worry too much about the coffee you drink (or how to extract it), cars, clothes, devices, cameras, foods, modes of living (minimalist) or your aesthetics. Just do what works for you, keep it simple and straightforward, and devote your precious energies on artistic and philosophical creation!

The less energy we waste on petty decisions, the more energy we have to dictate and direct the great decisions in our life!

ERIC

Filling the frame: an essential photography composition concept:

Cruise photography: something my buddy Todd Hata introduced to me a while back, and something new I want to explore:

What is virtue and why strive towards it?

As an artist (along with scientists), you IMPROVE life and the wellbeing and health of your fellow humans through your art creations and innovations.

A question on my mind:

Where does our initial impetus to create art come from?

For example a lot of older Freudian philosophers assume that the urge to create art is sexual; creating art as procreation (of your own children). This might be plausible, but there must be more to it.

I cannot speak for others, but let me try to best describe where I think I get my personal impetus to create art from:

Similar to Elon Musk — unified field theory of his companies (Space X, Tesla, Solar City) all working together and feeding into one another (Ashlee Vance idea from his biography on Musk).

Basic idea for us as photographers — let us create our own unified field theory to connect all the aspects of photography:

My life purpose: to blog, to share ideas, to think, to plumb deeper levels of knowledge, aesthetics, and art, and to help motivate creators, photographers, and all individuals — to make, wonder, and challenge.

To push culture forward and higher.

Once you have reached financial independence, location independence, you retire, and have ample free time and leisure, the question is this:

What is the best way to use my time and life?

Some thoughts:

Zen photography:

1. One camera, one lens (RICOH GR III)
2. Monochrome (one color). Or for color photography, keeping the colors super simple.
3. JPEG only
4. Direct, honest, and genuine photos. Only photographing what you’re interested in or care about.
5. No metrics for your photos. Sharing your photos on your website or blog. No social media.
6. Enjoying the perpetual process of improving your photography. No finality, or no perfect state. Continually making new photos, and striving for more.
7. Photography as giving you calm strength, an invigorated calm, and a strong purpose of living and life.

Get free photography tips on Eric Kim NEWSLETTER >

I had a nice chat with my buddy Don Dillonthe other day, and this was one of the big takeaways:

Once you’re a good photographer with a substantial body of work, NOW WHAT?

Meaning — what are your next steps in your photography? Some simple ideas:

1. Use Adobe Sparkto make a dynamic website/portfolio of your best work. Then share the link with friends and family and ask them: “How do the photos make you feel?” Then add testimonials to the page.
2. Publish your photographs as an “e-magazine” (digital magazine) by using iBooks Author (video tutorial)
3. Use Adobe InDesign to create a print book layout, and send the PDF file to a local printer, to make a ‘zine’ (magazine) of your work. Start by printing 20 copies, and distributing them to friends and family for free. Based on their feedback, try to sell them to your followers for $19.95 each afterwards.
4. Start blogging about your photographic experiences and life experiences. To keep it simple, signup on wordpress.comand start blogging! The secret: your blog posts don’t need to be “good”. Just make them honest, fun, and share your works in progress.
5. Get your photos printed: I recommend contacting my buddy Brian Milo at brian.milo@gmail.com(read my interview with Brian on the art of printing). I personally like printing my photos 8×12 inches as an optimal size.
6. Continue to build your following: Start an email newsletter via Mailchimp.com(what I use here) and keep your followers updated with your progress. 
7. The rolling stone never gathers moss: Keep on rolling. The purpose is for you to keep making photography FUN! (Don’s idea). As long as you’re having fun in photography, you’re doing all the right things!

SHOOT ON!
ERIC

Super pumped to share that PHOTO JOURNAL (Third Edition, 2019) is now available!

Also as an exciting promo: if you buy PHOTO JOURNAL right now, you can also INSTANTLY get a FREE digital download of PHOTO JOURNAL Mobile Edition! This means while you are waiting for your personal copy of PHOTO JOURNAL to ship to you, you can instantly engage with PHOTO JOURNAL, and reflect on more personal purpose in your photography. (Offer available only while supplies last.)

What makes interesting photos? Interesting details.

Reflection from PHOTO JOURNAL. Reflect what you love about your camera, and use this knowledge to empower you to keep making new and epic photos.

Discover more about the hottest straps in the photography game:

A visual and artistic gesture, a gist. 

Composition as an impression. Fleeting, moving, dynamic, full of life and vigor. 

To better understand your compositions and photographic and visual gist, sketch your images. I use procreate to trace my favorite compositions to better understand them, and to also deconstruct them for future reference — to create even more dynamic images in the future. 

Make a dynamic photo composition — lots of angles, triangles, low perspective, hands and head in different directions.

The goal is to make a composition as interesting and dynamic/full of force as possible.

Money is a mode of human and social interaction, of quantifying labor, and a medium of human trust. Money isn’t “real”— it isn’t a physical thing, it is a metaphysical notion of “value” and “worth”.

Thus a life chasing money is the wrong life. The better life — chase artistic creation, human interactions, and pushing sociology, culture, and human thriving forward.

Don’t use money to quantify yourself or your progress in life. When Achilles died we had no idea what his net wealth was. I have no idea how rich Steve Jobs was when he died (or when he was alive). Even Elon Musk’s net worth isn’t interesting to me; what’s more interesting is what he is working on, what his ideas are and what he’s building.

Ultimately the point I want to make is this:

Money isn’t the ultimate goal in life. The goal is personal and artistic greatness and creating a legacy which will empower future humans!

ERIC

One of the big problems about Silicon Valley startup thinking:

The aspiration to build an epic company and one day sell it for millions (or billions).

What if this was a bad way of thinking?

It seems the purpose of utilitarianism and most of modern economics and philosophy is this:

Raise the collective well-being of all humans.

I think this is a good goal, but what does this even mean?

What is “well-being”? Is it tied to physiological health and wellness, or is it tied to material wealth, and having lots of possessions?

Let me make the claim that the problem of modern capitalist philosophy and utilitarian thinking is that “quality of life” is tied to material and consumer goods, not physical and physiological/mental wellness, thriving, and health. 

Why is this?

In WordPress, you can use ‘Tiled Galleries’ (like shown below), which is a great way to publish, share, and view your work:

All of life is ethereal. It will soon fade to dust. So why accumulate things, and worry so much about the material world?

Discovered Sergio’s photos on ARS, this is why I love his photos:

An interesting way to live your life:

Fight for what you believe in, what you care about, and become the change which you wish to see in the world.

Listen on ERIC KIM PODCAST

I like this notion of a ‘high culture’ (“haute culture” in French).

What if we could do the same in the realm of photography? To elevate the culture of photography to a higher height. To go BEYOND small and petty issues in photography. To think long-term in our photography and artwork, to focus on long-term thriving, and to use this knowledge to EMPOWER ALL PHOTOGRAPHERS on the globe, and far into the future!

Some proposals:

A thought on long-term success:

We should play the long game!

What’s the best way to utilize your life? My basic idea:

Focus your energies on entrepreneurship and art-creation.

Get free photography tips on Eric Kim NEWSLETTER >

Dear friend,

Happy Monday! To get you going for this week photographically speaking, this week’s photo assignment is WATER.

A philosophical thing:

The point isn’t to eliminate all forms of pain and suffering.

The point is:

Gain more freedom over your personal life, and channel the GOOD types of pain and “suffering” to propel you to higher heights, and to become more epic and powerful!

Currently watching the Neuralink launch video, and wanted to share some of my personal thoughts:

In my talk at Google I shared the notion of ‘digital share-cropping’:

Don’t upload your photos to Facebook or Instagram if you desire control and freedom in your photography and artwork.

Two notions that can help us as photographers:

‘Crowd-sourcing’ and ‘wisdom of the crowds’.

But what is missing? A ‘double blind’ component (the primary innovation in arsbeta.com).

A thought while napping today:

I believe freedom (control over your life) is more important than ‘happiness’.

Let me explain:

Auto photo — making photos automatically, self-motivated, by yourself. No thinking. Just shooting and making.

A thought while at the gym today:

What if mental power was physical power?

Which means, when we are lacking mental willpower, we are actually lacking physical strength and power.

This means, if you desire more mental willpower, build your physical and physiological strength!

Don’t constrain yourself. All art is good art!

Calligraphy to calm and express your soul.

Some notes from studying James Tompkin’s excellent Computer Vision course at Brown University:

One of my life dreams was to travel, and I’ve been on the road for the last decade+.

What have I learned? Some personal reflections, also distilled in TRAVEL NOTES:

There are a trillion forms of self-expression in art. So why do we choose photography?

What’s real? What’s fake? What should we strive towards, and what should we avoid?

What’s meaningful? What’s interesting to us? How should we live our lives?

A thought:

We can binary categorize human beings into two categories: free or unfree.

Some thoughts:

Don’t even waste energy to critique others.

Focus on your own self development.

Strive to build a mighty mind.

War is our business. Self-war to elevate yourself. Struggle as fun. 

Follow your passion like the winged wind. Meditate on the shortness of your life and strive to use all your energy and willpower to create something epic, lasting, and powerful. 

My thought:

Let us assume you got another 60 or so years to live on planet earth. What do you desire from reality?

An effective compositional technique in photography: juxtaposition (contrasting two different elements or concepts in a single photograph):

On RICOH GR III, I’ve been shooting a lot of videos (1080p, 60fps) in high contrast black and white. This has been great, as it is another way to experience reality, create art, and to EXPAND my self-expression/outpression!

The biggest problem in photography, art, and modern life:

We don’t think the future will be greater, brighter, and more wonderful.

Fuck the nihilist thinking. The future is greater than we think!

I’m not so interested in the photos I’ve already shot, I’m more interested in the photos I have yet to photograph.

Which means live and shoot/explore on– you still have SO MANY new photos you have yet shot! You have so many new experiences you have yet experienced!

There are still SO MANY new adventures you have yet undertaken, so much new knowledge and visual science we have yet discovered.

The future is bright my friends!

ERIC

Why do you photograph? What do you photograph for?

A life without pain and suffering is undesirable. This means, having pain and suffering in life is BENEFICIAL to life.

But the question is– what type of pain is ‘good’ and beneficial to us, which helps us to grow?

My worst hell: if I lived my entire life on planet earth (until death) living a basic life. A life without wonder, danger, adventure, radical self-experimentation, and searching for beauty, knowledge, and wisdom.

Thus it seems a good strategy in life to AVOID [by all means] living what you consider a ‘basic‘ life.

This means in your entire life never stop exploring, never stop discovering, never stop conquering, never stop evolving, never stop hustling, never stop aspiring for more. Never stop anything!

The ocean is vast
Spread your mast, and spread your wings
Let the liquid air take you where you need to be
The ocean is free
Overwhelming with billows and wind from within
Sail furiously, sail free
Harness the power of the ocean and follow your own internal motions and flow
Like the ocean stay steady and strong
Your tides incircle the earth; your waves will never die.

ERIC

One of my goals in life:

Strive to have maximal energy everyday, and to never weary of my creative pursuits and activities.

How is this possible? Some ideas:

To make your photos more artistic, make them more unclear:

I’ve been shooting a lot of videos on my RICOH GR III, but the problem with videos:

What should I do with the videos?

Videos are a bit difficult to share and publish. But a fun new idea:

Turn your videos into animated GIF images!

For example, I like the GIPHY CAPTURE tool on Mac (made these videos on my MacBook laptop). Essentially what I do is this:

1. Play the video on my laptop
2. Use GIPHY CAPTURE to choose a part of the video I want to select
3. I trim the video, then export as .GIF
4. I upload the GIF file to my blog WordPress ‘media library’, and I publish and share it on a blog post.

To me, this is a very fun way to re-analyze your photos, and also view your photo-videos!

GIF as a future format for photographers: hybrid between photo and video!

Something fun I did while being disconnected on a cruise (without wifi):

Experiment with all the post-processing options in Adobe Photoshop to better understand and de-construct your photos.

To photograph your everyday life with zest, gusto, and love:

Recognize your life is precious, and strive to extract the maximum from your own life in your own photos.

This means, don’t desire any other life but your own life!

How Long Can You Enjoy Things?

Something I’ve learned in life:

Many things we buy, possess, or experience is pure novelty. We might enjoy it once, or have fun with it for a day (or a few days), but after a week or two — we get bored with it, and we want to go ‘onto the next one’.

The point of this essay is for me to reflect:

What do we get bored of, and what don’t we get bored of?

Besides the obvious, it seems an ideal strategy is whenever possible, never buy new.

If your motive is to make more intimate photos, shoot with a wider-angle lens (21mm, 24mm, 28mm, 35mm lens).

The perspective of a wide-angle lens will create more intimacy in your photos, which means that the viewers of your photos feel like they’re in your shoes. This means you will better make photos which can transport your viewer into your own two feet, seeing the world from your own vantage point and perspective.

Currently on a 5-day Carnival cruise from New Orleans to Mexico (day 4), and this is my thought:

A cruise ship is the ultimate psuedo-utopia.

Let me explain:

You’re brave, what is your duty? If you really knew me, you would know I don’t care much for myself. I don’t think of myself at all. 

My ego is just a tool. I yield it to guide my soul. I feel my role is to help empower others. To encourage, and uplift their spirits. To wear my confidence like mail, chained tight to my purpose with no kinks.

Drinking the Dionysian gin and tonic. Staring at my goal, I nod it. 

What is your duty to mankind? Only you can say. Let no nay-sayers guide you otherwise. Tie up your loose ends, and seek your own end.

ERIC

POETRY >

A thought on success:

Be insanely different from everyone (in other words, just be you).

Currently on a cruise ship (what I consider a pseudo-utopia).

Currently thinking about money:

What would be the purpose/function of money in a “post-monetary society”?

The less friction, the better. The more direct approach we take in life, the better.