ERIC KIM

How to Photograph Your Everyday Life

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!

Beauty in the ordinary (mundane)

cindy walking beach

One big realization:

Much of beauty resides in the mundane (ordinary, everyday).

This is our duty and task as photographers: to transform the ‘ordinary’ world and make it extraordinary.

Or in more simple terms:

Proclaim your thanksgiving of being alive, and striving to make photos which reflect your gratitude towards life.

knives and fork

In praise of monochrome

This is why I love monochrome:

You can transform and transfigure the ordinary world to look more beautiful, different, and extraordinary.

water

You only got this life to live.

My thought:

The end-game or end-point in life is to create artwork.

And for many of us, photography is our art-form. Thus, strive to use EVERY and ANY opportunity to make beautiful photographs, no matter how ordinary your existence is.

birds free

Practical tips and ideas

cruise casino
  1. Buy RICOH GR III, and bring it with you everywhere you go (paired with Eric Kim WRIST STRAP or Eric Kim NECK STRAP).
  2. Strive to make hyper-minimal compositions of everyday things.
  3. Always walk around with your camera on your neck like it were a necklace. Treat your camera like a fashion accessory which you also happen to use to photograph everything! Make it part of your ‘look’, just how you would wear a watch to public places. Just keeping my RICOH GR III, 21mm adapter, and Eric Kim NECK STRAP has helped me photograph lots of interesting moments I might have otherwise NOT shot (if my camera wasn’t just dangling around my neck). By having your camera on your neck, it reduces the friction necessary to make a photograph.
  4. Shoot high contrast black and white, which will make your everyday world and reality look more interesting. Also shoot at -1 or -2 exposure compensation, to make a more ‘low key‘ photo.
  5. JUST SHOOT IT: You never will know whether you will make a good photo or not until you just shoot it. Just shoot and don’t think too much about it!

ERIC

Photolosophy

Discover more personal meaning in your photographic life with PHOTOLOSOPHY >