Month: June 2021

We are often taught that it is good and virtuous to invest money in our “future “, and to secure a prudent retirement future. However that notion is upholding Puritan values of self sacrifice for the greater good, not necessarily your good. I say instead to stake out a few thousand dollars into spend that…

What is photography? An active *CURATION* of images (curation means what you ‘CARE’ [cura] for).

Something I’ve been wanting to work on for a long time: A comparison between the original Blade Runner vs the New One (2049). Some thoughts:

Denis Villeneuve (Director of the new blade runner) said in an interview: “Cinema is poetry. And poetry is free.” Perhaps we should apply this philosophy to photography as well. And you are the sole Director of your photography film life experience. Your photography is free, and photography is your ultimate creative canvas.

If photography is our art, then our camera is our arts creation machine. Isn’t the power of the camera magical? That this machine could create art objects out of nothing, perhaps all we need is embodied imagination, our legs and our hands, a little bit of creativity, and our own imagination.

Shadows are wonderfully simple thing to photograph, and to make abstract mysterious images. Focus on shooting more shadows— it is very fun and interesting.

This quote from the philosopher poet and aphorist Publilius Syrus puzzled me for a long period of time. But I think I understand it at least in the terms of photography. The general gist is that even the smallest, most microscopic, macro mode, small detail or thing can become a beautiful and great subject photograph.…

When I first heard Kanye tweet “I watch blade runner on loop” I was intrigued to rewatch it. And I was not disappointed — it’s a truly great film. Beautiful, great cinematography and color schemes and palettes — worthy of any visual artist to watch, analyze and study!

Photolink — inspired by Chainlink (chain.link). The idea — Uncovering and sharing how all photos are connected.

Why Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is so interesting to me — open source money. A glorious future with nobody controlling the money, but humans and people and technology. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as the future of money, commerce, and interpersonal relationships and connections. Also my fascination with “micro payments”— a Bitcoin being able to be infinitely small…

Made with ‘cookbook’ theme, on Affinity Publisher: Towards a more effective, interesting, and creative way to publish and share your photos.

Social media (Facebook, Instagram) is lame platforms to share your work. Why? The procrustean bed — just uploading one photo at a time (to maximize your likes). Sure you can do the ‘slideshow’ feature in Instagram and Facebook, but nobody really likes it. And thus the needless social media treadmill of just maximizing your follower…

Why do I love fashion, product design, automotive and car design, graffiti, architecture, photography, painting, films and sculpture? My extreme joy of visual things. Visual things also as personified through human beings and the built social environment. moral of the story: spend more time investigating analyzing and creating visual things. Any visual thing which inspires…

I got a grocery market within walking distance from my home, which is a Whole Foods and surprisingly it is a very fun place to shoot street photography and just kill time. RICOH GR III is super low key and stealth to shoot while at the grocery store:

What is the difference between photos and photographs and pictures? Well, back in the day they used to call paintings pictures. Now they call paintings paintings, and they call photographs pictures. But what are we doing as photographers? We are creating and painting your own pictures via photos. Thus perhaps to go on photography is…

Almost everything in life has a certain degree of novelty. For example Lamborghinis and scissor doors, and to even an extent the Tesla model X and the falcon wing doors. We all are searching for novelty in our lives and our consumer goods, but once the novelty wears off, perhaps in a week or two,…

Thought — Perhaps much of the existential dread, ennui, and maybe even depression is because many moderns aren’t having kids anymore. For myself at least, I realized — when you’re raising a kid, you’re too busy to even have the free time and effort to ‘think’ about your purpose in life, or other existential things.…

One of the easiest ways to make more interesting and enigmatic photos — drastically under-expose your photos. Make your photos ‘as dark as possible’ while still being able to see *some* detail:

A realization: For my whole life, I’ve always wanted to be *somewhere else*. For example, even as a student at UCLA, I wanted to be in Paris, skipping around like Henri Cartier-Bresson and shooting street photography there– not noting for a second that LA was actually a superbly fantastic place to shoot street photography. If…

Or in other words, the effort is the reward.

Something that is quite cool about the future — the trend towards non-ownership.

To shoot much, not tire and not lose motivation … perhaps this is more important than “happiness” in life. For me, my photographic productivity is my highest state and value. So if you’re living in a bad scenario or suffering *yet* you’re photographically productive, ignore your own pain and suffering and delight in your photography!

FREE MOTIVATION ON ERIC KIM NEWSLETTER > Dear friend, A thought: Perhaps the best end-goal in life is to just focus on your photography. What I mean by that is this: Whenever I meet uber-successful, rich or retired people, it seems their end-goal in life (after earning money, accolades, etc) is to just focus on…

Why I prefer Bitcoin as the best cryptocurrency — it is the most simple, will probably not undergo many changes (no bitcoin ‘version 2’, like Ethereum 2.0 or Chainlink 2.0). This means less stuff to follow, read up on, and stay updated with. The benefit of buying Bitcoin: Just ‘set it and forget it’ (or…

Fun thing– 24fps in RICOH GR III high contrast video mode, just recording my warmup. Love watching the slower frame rate, and out of focus monochrome:

A thought: Why is it that Zen Monks seem to love drinking tea (green tea, caffeinated beverages)? Also– why is it that I love coffee so much? My thought — a connection between adrenaline and zen (an advancement of Mihalay C’s notion of ‘flow’ — the ‘optimal mode of existence and performance’ based on doing…

if you try to optimize for everything, you optimize for nothing.

A thought: in life we often speculate in other things people stocks cryptocurrency‘s etc. However why not spend that extra money time and energy to speculate in yourself? this means investing your money in cash into yourself, your own self development, books, education, workshops, tools, equipment, services, and other random things would strike your fancy.…

A big personal lesson I learned once having a kid is that you must radically adapt and adjust your life and lifestyle towards pursuing your passions while taking care of baby. This baby carrier has been a godsend, which still allows me to walk around, shoot street photography, think, and work mostly on my phone.…

My personal question ambition: to conquer photography and master all forms, aspects, and elements in philosophies around it.

A critical inquiry and questioning towards a deeper truth, for your own personal benefit and the benefit of others, the collective and society.

In praise of black and white to simplify photography and perhaps simplify life. Even when it comes to cars clothes and devices and accessories, perhaps to embrace the black-and-white, and the yin and yang is key. Even when looking at your images, think about the proportion of black versus white or white versus black in…

Photography as a tonic for the body, mind and soul.

Level with the bass and the treble rumble hard go fast your life won’t last. Just look around you life is a blast. It doesn’t matter what your ranking was in class, just make sure you have class. Stick with your own style your own unique look. Wherever you look there’s only you. Ignore others…

This is the funny irony: we think we need motivation or inspiration before we go out and shoot. However, it seems better to focus on just drinking a lot of coffee in the morning and getting out of the house and trying to step and walk as far as you can, and then naturally let…

Photos in photography is all real, you regardless whether it is digital or film or shot with the phone. In deeply thinking and philosophizing about life in general, we all understand that money is not “real”, however photos exist and therefore photography might be the most worthy focus and pursuit in our lives. In short,…

One of the huge new benefits of the ultra wide camera on iPhone and lots of smart phones in general is that you can get really really close to things or approach things from a unusual angle, and when you share with ultra wide angle lens you create a very unique and interesting image.

There is nothing sacred in photography. The goal is to use photography and the camera as an artistic tool in medium to create artworks which deify and glorify reality, life, and your own creative vision of the world.

HDR can unlock a whole new creative outlet for you in your photography — I’d recommend experimenting with the in/camera HDR function, especially if your camera has it like the RICOH GR III in camera HDR — to unlock new shadows and to create new types of imagery. Also you can shoot in camera HDR,…

A random thought I had this morning. Money has a technology is great and fascinating because it motivates people to move. But then I thought deeper – – what are some other things that motivates people to move? My answer: photography as a great way to get the people moving to get yourself moving and…