A simple life lesson I’ve learned:

Never trust the hearsay or the second hand talk of others.

Instead, place 100x more weight in your own experiences, your own thoughts, conscience, gut, and life.

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“I took photos with my camera and my heart” – Gabriel Cualladó

Huge thanks to my friend Mark for sending me this great photo book on Gabriel Cuadallo and his photography. A new source of visual and photographic inspiration for me, especially in street photography:

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A very simple thing you can do as a photographer to augment your joy (especially with our new quarantine lifestyle in which we are spending a lot of time at home):

Print your favorite photos, and mount them on your walls at home!

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Towards a brave new world of photography and crypto technologies:

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A thought and realization:

Without physiological strength and wellness, no good creative work can be done or accomplished.

Thus if your physiology or health feels poor, focus all your efforts on improving your health towards maximal physiological health, then your creative work will easily follow!

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First sent to ERIC KIM NEWSLETTER >

Dear friend,

2020 was a hell of a year. My deep optimism:

2021 will be a great year for your photography.

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Critic means ‘judge’. Certainly it is good to judge our photos (to know which photos to keep, and which to ditch). However when our inner-photographic critic is bad:

It prevents us from shooting *new* photos because of a fear that the photograph might be ‘bad’.

Simple thoughts:

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Recently got an “all in one” Black + Decker oventop baker, “air fryer”, toaster and oven and learned:

None of it works that well.

Compare this to this funny “Nuwave ‘Infared oven’” Cindy and I got which actually works very well. Super simple — one function (to cook stuff), super simple buttons and controls, and it just works.

Which makes me think:

Perhaps the best tools are specialized tools.

For example, iPhone Pro is great for photography but ultimately if your goal is to maximize your photography, RICOH GR III is perhaps 20x better. Why? The Ricoh has only one function — make photos, and all the functionality is optimized towards that— fits well in your hand, compact, lightweight, great high ISO performance, etc. Whereas the iPhone needs to do a lot of stuff — make phone calls, text message, play games, operate apps, use as GPS, etc.

Thus the takeaway is this:

Don’t get suckered by “all in one” solutions and tools — there will always be a compromise somewhere.

Better than decide or determine what *to do* (or to do more of this year), better to think of deciding what you don’t want to do this year, what you want to do less of this year, and what you want to remove or subtract from your life.

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Or new lifestyle?