In Praise of Electric and Self-Driving Cars
In today’s world, assuming you have the means— why would you ever buy a gasoline car?
August 2019
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The Price of Ownership
When you buy something, it requires much of you. You must take care of it, you must maintain it, you must use it. You don’t want to just store it, or have it collect dust somewhere. And if it does become unused, you’re gonna one day figure out what to do with it — to…
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Bigger and More is Worse.
A lesson: Generally in life, more and bigger is worse. Let me explain.
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Virtue Flexing
Beyond “virtue signaling”— virtue flexing.
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What should I do with my life once I retire and am financially and location independent?
For many of us, we strive to retire, become “financially independent” and “location independent”. It seems the modern form of success is to become a “digital nomad”. But once you achieve all this — then what?
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ERIC KIM PORTFOLIO BAG: ALL-DAY STREET
ERIC KIM PORTFOLIO BAG: Perfectly fits your iPad, iPhone, and RICOH GR III or II: Only 3 left in stock >
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Imperfect is Perfect
Free photography tips on ERIC KIM NEWSLETTER > An encouraging idea to start this week:Whatever ‘imperfect’ art you make is perfect! What I mean is this: In our lives, we are often discouraged to create artwork because we think: If my artwork isn’t “good”, it isn’t worth doing. However this is my thought: It doesn’t matter…
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Is it bad that everyone is always on their phones now?
It is pretty obvious that at this point, we are all always on our devices [phones, laptops, etc]. Is this a bad thing?
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Why I Love Street Photography
The joy of walking the streets, wandering, interesting with strangers (or not). The joy and delight in being a part of society. The joy of making art works from human beings in urban and public places. When in doubt, shoot more street. Go to the downtown area more. Travel to more cities. Attempt to shoot…
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The desire for new shapes, new forms, new ideas
What makes visual art so fun and great — The excitement to witness and create new forms, shapes, colors, and combinations! For example my impetus in photography: The excitement to witness new things, new scenes, new combinations, and to create NEW types of images!
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Is Flexing Bad?
Thinking about materialism and consumerism: Much of the things we purchase is in order to ‘flex’ our personal possessions. To assert our status, richness, power, etc. Questions: Is flexing ‘bad’? Why flex? What would a world without flexing be? Is flexing ‘good’?
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Beautiful design gives me hope for the future and a reason to live on!
Seeing beautiful design awakens me, invigorates me, and gives me new hope towards the future. I have a reason to keep on living, to keep witnessing beautiful designs but also to have the motivation to create more of my own beautiful designs! For car design, McLaren and Lamborghini.
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Artistic Outpression
Expression = ex+press the artistic power from within yourself outwards. I’d prefer the term “outpression”— pressing outwards (from inside yourself) your creative and artistic power and force.
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Is Consumerism and Materialism Bad?
In American and modern culture, it is all about consumerism, materialism, and obsession with accumulating more — more money, more possessions, fancier cars, fancier possessions and object/tools, more land, more homes, more everything. Now a simple question — Is this bad? My thoughts:
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5 Photography Composition Ideas
Free photography tips on Eric Kim NEWSLETTER An infinite amount of ways you can approach photography:
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Photos I Like
How I choose photos I like:
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That Which does not Kill You Makes you Stronger
A maxim from our buddy Nietzsche. The basic idea: All wounds you receive in your life stimulate your recuperative properties in your body. Thus in life, realize that all the pain, difficulty and suffering you experience in life is actually beneficial to you. The only “bad” thing that happens to us is if we die.…
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It’s all Street
In striving to come up with a good definition of street photography, it seems the most simple is the best: Any photo you shoot in public is a street photograph. Photo+graph= light drawing. Street photography as light street drawings. It means you’re using a camera (light capturing device) to make sketches of stuff you see…
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Can We Evolve Ourselves in a Single Lifetime?
A thought: Is it possible we can direct our own self-evolution within a single lifetime? [our lifetime]
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HENRI NECK STRAP Mark III: The Best Strap for Street Photographers
HENRI NECK STRAP MARK III available in Mahogany Brown [Amazon] or Phantom Black [HAPTIC SHOP]. Learn more >
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What is the Source of our Strength?
Where does our personal strength and energy come from?
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Daily Blog of Activities
Create your own ‘stories’, by just using your own website/blog to document your everyday experiences. Blogging as a tool to reflect on your experiences, to digest them, and to derive more joy from them! Thus blogging is a process of: Memory assimilation Personal growth and evolution Reflection/meditation Augmented intelligence
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Don’t photograph what it looks like, photograph what it FEELS like
In praise of blurry photos, out-of-focus photos, and photos which are ‘imperfect’. Perhaps they better document our memories, emotions, and feelings of a scene — imperfect, gritty, full of movement, and emotional?
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Why Strive towards Knowledge?
What is the practical parts of striving towards knowledge and philosophy? Should it be used as an aid to improve our lives, or to discover knowledge beyond ourselves — knowledge which not benefit ourselves, but maybe future generations of humanity?
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Make the World more Beautiful!
Strive to make beautiful products, beautiful websites, beautiful art works, beautiful photos, beautiful forms, shapes, music, and ideas. Transfigure the world with your artistic vision! This is the impetus behind HAPTIC, ARS, this blog, and everything I do.
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Is Advertising Bad?
It seems that 90%+ of the online economy comes from advertising (Google/Facebook owns the majority). This basically means: Offer a free service to the user, and derive income from advertising. Now, I personally have an aversion to advertising. I hate watching TV ads, seeing ads in magazines, or having ‘popup ads’ or banner advertising online.…
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Live so You May Desire to Live Again!
A thought from our buddy Nietzsche [Twilight of the Idols]: Live your life (today) as you would desire to live again forever.
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There are No Rules in Photography or Art
You make the rules. The photo or image isn’t sacred. Feel free to remix, modify, or alter the image however you desire.
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Why Play?
To play is to be human.
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Frugality Isn’t a Virtue
A thought: Too much focus on being overly frugal and economical is bad.
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Photo Triggers
What triggers you to make photos?
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Why the RICOH GR III is Better than the Leica Q2
Currently the RICOH GR III is the best ‘standalone’ digital camera on the market. Superior to all competitors, including Leica Q2.
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How to Motivate Yourself
A thought — How do we actually “motivate” ourselves in life? Where does the power and energy of motivation come from? This is also tied to ideas on free will.
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Never Stop Sharing
Perhaps a principle to life and our personal evolution and thriving: Never stop sharing.
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Art Technology
The problem with technology now: Technology is too focused on data, ‘efficiency’, ‘optimization’, and all these nerdy things. What should technology be doing for us? Making us MORE ARTISTIC, more curious, and more child-like.
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Reformat Your Mind
After mucking around with the new macOS Catalina beta on my laptop [and corrupting my hard-drive upon installing a new Beta Update], I did a fresh new install of the OS. It is great. I feel lighter, more free, and more pumped to create new things. There was great joy in re-installing files and applications…
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Treat Your Own Photo Library as Your News Stream
Instead of mindlessly scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, or flipping through stories, why not scroll through our own photos? Scroll through our own “Media Library” on WordPress, to scroll through our “Camera Roll” on iPhone/iPad, or scroll through our Google Photos app to reinspire ourselves. It is easy for us to forget our old photos.…
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How to Photograph Nature
Nature: going outdoors, on hikes, fresh air; good for the soul. Even though we are mostly city folk, I think the hybrid of extreme city and extreme nature is a good one. So us as street photographers, let us also venture more forth into nature and use our photographic skills there as well.
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Personal Evolution
What is a good direction to take your life? Direct your own personal evolution.
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What Do You Really Care For in Life?
A simple way to think about and approach life: Only dedicate your energies on things you care for.
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True Happiness is the Striving for More!
Listen to on Eric Kim PODCAST A thought while at the gym today: True happiness is the striving for more. Once you got the thing, you aren’t “happy” anymore. Happiness is the joy of overcoming difficulties, challenges, the joy of battling an obstacle/opponent. This means: Never stop striving for more.
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Why You Should JUST SHARE IT.
Listen to on Eric Kim PODCAST When in doubt, just share it. Even if there is a 1% chance you can help someone else, it is worth sharing! JUST SHARE IT. Share Your Life Journey with Others Share Your Dopeness with Others
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What Should I Photograph?
As a photographer you got a trillion things to shoot. Question — what should I photograph? Meaning — Are there certain subject matter which is more interesting or less interesting to photograph? Are there certain things you shouldn’t photograph?
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Direct Line Philosophy
An idea I got from my buddy Ryan from Backyard Brew in Palo Alto: Perhaps the best way to live life is directly. To think about your personal ‘end game’, and attack it directly.
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Share Your Life Journey with Others
A simple way to approach blogging, sharing, or publishing online: Just share your own life experiences and journey with others. It ain’t a matter whether your life is ‘interesting’ or ‘boring’. Just keep it direct, unfiltered, uncensored, and true:
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Bounding Boxes Composition in Photography
When analyzing your photos or the photos of others, integrate ‘Bounding Boxes’ [in red] to think about the spacing/composition of your photo:
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The Kaizen Approach to Photography and Life
Get free photography and life inspiration on ERIC KIM NEWSLETTER > A thought: Perhaps we should focus on tiny (incremental), 1% improvements everyday (no breaking the chain).
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What’s the Future for Photography?
Currently reading the ‘What happened to the future?’ essay on Founders Fund, and trying to think: What is the future of photography?
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How to Monetize a Blog Without Advertising
I don’t know about you, but I hate banner-based advertising on blogs and websites. The practical question is: How do you monetize a blog WITHOUT using advertising? Thoughts:
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ARS: Social Media for Photographers Done Right.
My epic vision [and the vision of all of us at ARS: Cindy, Kevin, Jun, Annette] is this: ARS is social media ‘done right’ for photographers. A social media platform for photographers that isn’t based on advertising, that isn’t a popularity contest, and isn’t based on toying with your emotions. A social media platform which…