Month: August 2019

  • Engineer and Visual Artist: Interview with Junwoo Kim

    Engineer and Visual Artist: Interview with Junwoo Kim

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

  • Never Stop Practicing

    Never Stop Practicing

    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!

  • Proof of Concept

    Proof of Concept

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

  • Focusing too much on lifestyle or lifestyle choices is a waste of time and life

    Focusing too much on lifestyle or lifestyle choices is a waste of time and life

    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…

  • How to Fill the Frame in Photography Composition

    How to Fill the Frame in Photography Composition

    Filling the frame: an essential photography composition concept:

  • How to Shoot Cruise Photography

    How to Shoot Cruise Photography

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

  • Virtue

    Virtue

    What is virtue and why strive towards it?

  • How to Make More Meaningful Photos
  • The artist as the improver of life

    The artist as the improver of life

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

  • Where does the impetus to create art come from?

    Where does the impetus to create art come from?

    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…

  • Unified Field Theory for Photography

    Unified Field Theory for Photography

    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

    My Life Purpose

    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.

  • How Should I Best Use My Time and Life?

    How Should I Best Use My Time and Life?

    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 PHOTO.

    ZEN PHOTO.

    Zen photography: One camera, one lens (RICOH GR III) Monochrome (one color). Or for color photography, keeping the colors super simple. JPEG only Direct, honest, and genuine photos. Only photographing what you’re interested in or care about. No metrics for your photos. Sharing your photos on your website or blog. No social media. Enjoying the…

  • Next Steps in Your Photography

    Next Steps in Your Photography

    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: Use Adobe…

  • Buy PHOTO JOURNAL, get FREE Mobile Edition!

    Buy PHOTO JOURNAL, get FREE Mobile Edition!

    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…

  • Photograph the Details

    Photograph the Details

    What makes interesting photos? Interesting details.

  • I Love my Camera

    I Love my Camera

    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.

  • New Customer Reviews of Henri Straps (Limited Supplies Left!)

    New Customer Reviews of Henri Straps (Limited Supplies Left!)

    Discover more about the hottest straps in the photography game:

  • Visual Gist

    Visual Gist

    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…

  • Dynamic Composition

    Dynamic Composition

    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 isn’t Real

    Money isn’t Real

    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…

  • Build a Company You’d Never Sell

    Build a Company You’d Never Sell

    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?

  • What does it actually mean to “improve our quality of life”?

    What does it actually mean to “improve our quality of life”?

    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…

  • In Praise of Tiled Galleries

    In Praise of Tiled Galleries

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

  • Ethereal

    Ethereal

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

  • Street Photography by SERGIO MORAIS

    Street Photography by SERGIO MORAIS

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

  • Fight for what you believe in

    Fight for what you believe in

    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

  • High Photography

    High Photography

    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…

  • Play the Long Game

    Play the Long Game

    A thought on long-term success: We should play the long game!

  • Entrepreneurship and Art

    Entrepreneurship and Art

    What’s the best way to utilize your life? My basic idea: Focus your energies on entrepreneurship and art-creation.

  • 🌊Water Photography Assignment and Tips

    🌊Water Photography Assignment and Tips

    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 Life Without Pain or Suffering isn’t a Life Worth Living

    A Life Without Pain or Suffering isn’t a Life Worth Living

    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!

  • Thoughts on Neuralink

    Thoughts on Neuralink

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

  • Why Instagram is Bad for Photography

    Why Instagram is Bad for Photography

    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.

  • Photography Crowd-Sourcing the Wisdom of Crowds

    Photography Crowd-Sourcing the Wisdom of Crowds

    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).

  • Freedom over Happiness

    Freedom over Happiness

    A thought while napping today: I believe freedom (control over your life) is more important than ‘happiness’. Let me explain:

  • Auto Photo

    Auto Photo

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

  • What if mental willpower was physical willpower?

    What if mental willpower was physical willpower?

    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!

  • CRUISE.

    Cruise experience— great for photography, thinking, creating, meditating, and traveling.

  • All artistic self-expression is good.

    All artistic self-expression is good.

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

  • Calligraphy is Good for the Soul.

    Calligraphy is Good for the Soul.

    Calligraphy to calm and express your soul.

  • Computer Vision Notes

    Computer Vision Notes

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

  • Travel

    Travel

    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:

  • Why Photography?

    Why Photography?

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

  • What’s Real?

    What’s Real?

    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?

  • Free or Unfree?

    Free or Unfree?

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

  • Ignore everyone else; just focus on yourself.

    Ignore everyone else; just focus on yourself.

    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…

  • What Do You Want from Reality?

    What Do You Want from Reality?

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

  • Juxtaposition in Photography

    Juxtaposition in Photography

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