Month: October 2020

The ideal feeling and outlook towards life.

Photography is all about framing, position of yourself and your camera, and how you compose the scene:

As I get older, it seems I prize reliability more and more. The “best” less and less.

We want to super charge and turbo charge our vehicles, devices, etc… but why not turbocharge ourselves?

The new goal:

TURBO HUMANS.

The goal:

Maximize the strength of your own soul to the max.

In life, a thought:

Don’t make irreversible decisions.

Strive to only make decisions which are short term and not permanent. Decisions which can be reversed are best!

Before attempting or achieving anything in life, the most important thing:

Like yourself above all others!

In other words, position yourself in a way in which you would not trade spots with any other human being on the planet!

TURBO PHOTOS FOR YALL:

FIRST SENT ON ERIC KIM NEWSLETTER

Dear friends,

The more I think about it, the more I love photography and am an advocate for it.

Some thoughts:

Park as optimal place for zen, body and mind disconnect.

What makes great photos? The details!

The great joy of photography:

It is free and unlimited, especially digital photography!!!

Imagine the Supercharging network, but for us photographers:

On increasing your creative ISO:

Life is far more fun and interesting when you are RAW and unedited!

The goal; maximize your muscular strength, your muscular sense of well-being, and the feeling of the ‘pump’ in your muscles growing!

The feeling of growth or the personal *perception* of growth is what brings us great pleasure!

Color photography is a stronger visual stimulus!

I’m very sensitive to light. I love natural light (especially I prefer homes with a lot of natural light, and huuuge floor to ceiling Windows). In fact I’ve realized, if I could optimize for just one thing in a home, it is having maximal light.

A thought:

Perhaps my predilection for photography comes from the fact I’m very sensitive to light, and love it so deeply?

To maximize clarity for hands and textures and any textures in general, black and white is king:

The joy of street photography: just going on nice random street walks. Walking around on the streets, enjoying your flaneur-like pace, no hurry or rush. Keen observation of the environment around you, while shooting street photos of scenes you enjoy!

Our desire for stronger visual stimuli–

DIGITAL DEFENSE:

Don’t do anything until something internal within yourself prompts you to do so!

The goal is to enter a state of creative flow. But how do we achieve this? Some thoughts:

A very simple yet essential entrepreneurial principle:

Always choose and optimize for control than engagement.

Better to own your own website and blog and publish there, than to publish on Instagram or Facebook. Sure InstaBook will give you more likes, views and “engagement”, but you lose control and power.

Control, power, and maximal self autonomy is the goal!

Why color photography? Color photography contains more information and stronger visual stimuli for us and our viewers.

A tragic life is a more meaningful and beautiful life.

It all comes down to force. Your mind, ability to force and change things and move things (and people!)

Photos shot from the excellent book ‘How to think about war‘ by Johanna Hanink (Brown University, published by Princeton Press):

How does one progress, evolve and find inspiration as a photographer-artist? My thought:

Perhaps we need stronger visual stimuli.

Stronger visual stimuli from the real world (embodied reality), maybe from virtual reality (two eyes), perhaps from cinema and movies and music videos, photos, illustrations, paintings, sculpture, dance, theater — it is all good!

TURBO THOUGHTS FOR YALL:

Anything you can do to drive the evolution of photography forward is entrepreneurship. To take personal risks *not* to just make money (or make more money), but to truly evolve and drive change and progression in the whole field of photography!

Any single thing you can do to make you more active, social, and out on the streets… the better!

That means buy things that help encourage you to be out more, interacting with others more, etc!

Heraclitus once said, ‘Every day is equal to every other day’ which means:

Put zero hope in the future; only focus on the present moment, today, and the now!

Or in other words:

Strive to maximize your creative productivity and joy right now, not later!

Things will never change, but you can do things which change your present moment and the future.

AVENGERS made 2+ billion dollars (it is a movie/film). Can we imagine still photos, or text-based things doing the same? Probably not!

Lesson:

For us photography entrepreneurs, let us double-down on doing more video-related things, to augment our still photos!

Everything you’ll need to know about photography:

Maximal individualism is the goal which means:

You are the hero, and you strive to max out all your abilities, skills, and daily physiological power.

How does one do this? Some thoughts:

Life ain’t a competition, but when it comes to entrepreneurial and other personal business matters … we all have a certain ‘archimedes lever‘ in life which means:

You have a certain gift.

This gift manifested in you via:

1. Your birth
2. Your upbringing
3. The society in which you were raised in

For example I ERIC KIM was fortunate enough to study Sociology, which is essentially a good thing for me and street photography, as I see street photography as simply applied ‘visual sociology‘.

Think and reflect deeply on yourself, your life and your skills. And don’t water yourself down; maximize yourself to the fullest!

ERIC

Just moved into a new pad and got Verizon FIOS and holy shit; this is amazing!

Just watched this Big Sean music video and really liked the notion of an extreme-low angle composition:

The camera as a tool to empower you:

Hype means ‘above’ or ‘over’.

Hype man:

An individual who jumps up and down behind you and tells others how great you are.

But why need a hype man, when you can be your own hype man?

Figure out life as you go!

How does one become a great blogger, and what does it mean to become a great blogger? My thoughts.

First of all, I believe it means to give yourself the freedom to blog about anything. Literally anything on your mind. And the best blogger is the most fearless blogger; the most courageous blogger. It ain’t about being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ — it is about not censoring yourself. The more directly and honestly you can speak your mind, the better. 

Also, it means for longevity. To never run out of ideas to blog about; this is the goal!

Real photo:

How is photography actually done in the real world?

Perhaps this is why street photography is so fun and interesting — all randomness, chaos and chance. Street photography as insanely fun because you can control so little of it. And perhaps this is what creates a more fun game and challenge for us?

All day, every day.

Photography as a tool to augment joy and thanksgiving in your life.

In other words, defense with financial matters as more robust than offense in additional money-acquisition matters.

A better life means a life of *more* freedom: freedom of movement, freedom over your schedule, freedom over your activities and freedom over your life!

The striving towards satisfaction; a sucker’s game. Why? Once you’re satisfied… then what?

Meat, glorious meat!

Let us not be suckered and fooled:

Digital publishing (not print) is king.

Digital is far superior to print in sooo many different ways:

1. Speed
2. Flexibility
3. Ability to re-edit past publications
4. Cost (virtually free)
5. Scale (can manipulate and spread almost indefinitely!)

Digital publishing, media includes your photos, thoughts, words, videos, sound, art, movements, and far far more:

It all comes down to moving others and the people!

It seems the most ‘antifragile‘ mindset to have is this:

Remain the strong zen-stoic calm of what you cannot control, but when you do identify what you *can* control, strive to exploit that to the maximum!

Shine brighter:

Conserve your energy and power. Don’t complain; change:

Leverage what’s in your power to change, and when you cannot change certain things, let it be. Or given the constraints of something you cannot change, seek your own personal maximum benefit!

I’m very grateful for my life, all my advantages and accomplishments yet I’m still dissatisfied — I want more. Perhaps this is a good hybrid? To harness dissatisfaction to continue to hustle forward, yet still expressing and feeling gratitude for your past accomplishments?

The goal in photography: to never run out of inspiration and motivation to keep making new photos, to never lose your enthusiasm to keep exploring, and creating the new!

A life of perfect ease and satisfaction … how would we be any different than happy cows?

A personal essay on how I appreciate cops so much (especially coach Greg Lowe, former Oakland PD head), and in defense of cops in general:

What gets us moving and what motivates us to move, act, do, create and challenge things? My thought: perhaps dissatisfaction is good. If we were perfectly satisfied with everything, what motivation or motive would we have to do anything?

I am a very curious case. On one hand, I am very anti consumerist and capitalist. On the other hand, I am very pro-capitalism and pro-consumerism in other contexts and domains. This is the tricky thing:

There are times when buying stuff (merino wool clothing, happy lamps at home, workout equipment and weights for home) is legitimately a good use of money. And there are other times when money is a huuuuge waste like buying expensive sneakers, expensive watches, expensive cars, etc.

Then I suppose the pragmatic goal we have is this:

When is capitalism-consumerism bad, and when is it good?

So the ‘when‘ question needs to be addressed!

Hack your environment:

Going from a 300 square foot “luxury” minimalist studio apartment to a 1,700 square foot 2 bedroom, 2 bath, enclosed garage, three floors— I will easily say:

The smaller more high quality (well designed space in a “luxury” apartment complex) space is superior.

Why? Some reasons: