Month: December 2021

What is the best mind? The most empty one. The more empty your mind, the more open your mind, the more interesting and unique ideas can come into your mind. Thus, it seems the wisest strategy is to optimize our mind for mind space.

Therefore as a general life strategy, rather than seeking to intake for information, strive instead the opposite: to remove more information from your mind.

More effective to unlearn than to learn. More effective to get rid of superstition than to add knowledge and wisdom. For photography art, aesthetics and design, most effective to subtract than to add.

Just strive to make the “minimum viable image”. In order to do this, shoot with the smallest JPEG setting possible, shoot black and white, and when you’re composing and framing, get closer and fill the frame with it. Also, minus exposure compensation to show less detail. Make your photos as minimal, as dark as possible, and as simple as possible. With the least amount of detail as possible.

Deeper integration with nature, more natural light. More innovative lighting design, exposure to the public. Blurring of indoor and outdoor, and blurring of public and private.

The priority is pedestrians, not cars. In fact, the ideal future design is where you don’t need or want a car. The ideal future design of a city encourages at least 20,000 steps a day.

Future design as being more minimalist, with the most superior and supreme materials. Material innovation as the thing of the future. For example, future footwear with more use of Gotetex, and also more durable materials, but lighter.

Industrial design: greater use of materials like stainless steel, aluminum, and carbon fiber.

With our homes, greater use of Wabi Sabi wood, glass, and stainless steel.

Then perhaps just share your enthusiasm and thoughts with others?

The source of all of our intelligence, or bodily wisdom, and what does it mean to be human? To walk. To be bipeds.

Therefore, the most important shoes are the ones that motivate you to walk and move, and cause as little pain as humanly possible. Typically this means the more minimalist, the more barefoot, the least amount of padding. Zero drop.

Water shoes tend to be good. I’m also interested in the minimalist sandals from Xero.

One of the things I love most in my current Airbnb apartment in Mexico City is the massive floor to ceiling windows. Which allow in a massive amount of natural light.

I’m so surprised just how much it improves my mood, my energy, and my overall gratitude to life. Now I understand why so many ancient religions consider the sun as God.

As opposed to going endlessly shopping, striving to find the perfect product that perfectly fits your needs.

Why I prefer Japanese photographers over western or American photographers: Japanese photographers focus more on soul and emotion, whereas American and western photographers focus too much on technical aspects.

Good Japanese photographers to study include Shomei Tomatsu, Daido Moriyama, Araki, Eikoh Hosoe.

You’re out and about shooting, strive to show less of the scene.

Another reminder that photography and art is more about subtraction than addition.

While here in Mexico City, some thoughts:

Still my favorite city, especially the Roma Norte neighborhood:

Just go to the local market and buy eggs, go to the market and buy “chiccharon pensado” (pressed meat for chiccharon, more meat heavy). Get arrachera on the streets, even bone marrow! And the crispy crunchy chiccharon to scoop up your meat.

Also a lot of places sell cooked cochinita pibil by the kilo!! (2.2 pounds of meat). Makes life so much easier, and to get enough of your meat and protein intake! And just do chin-ups at the local park.

In photography, to disorient your viewer as a good thing.

Don’t put too much faith in your LCD screen, whether it comes to matters of framing, or reviewing. Rather, stick to ‘highlight exposure‘ priority, and just wait later until you download your photos to your laptop.

Everyone wants a self driving car or a Tesla or any other futuristic car. But isn’t NOT to own a car better? To just Uber everywhere?

I think so. Then it seems the ideal strategy is not trying to hard to be different. If you are perceived as being the same as others, so be it.

Dear friends,

A thought:

Perhaps the greatest benefit of street photography is helping us build supreme confidence in ourselves.

And if I think about it, even my workshops are mostly about conquering your fears, and to build confidence in your photography (approaching strangers, photographing strangers with or without permission, and just confidence in general).

So how does one conquer confidence? Some thoughts:

Or in other words, we desire to show off, in a more low-key way?

Some material thoughts: even though there are some materials which are great, aesthetically they don’t really look that nice.

For example, I recently got these black merino wool shorts, and even though the material and performance is quite good, I just don’t really like the way it looks. The material is too floppy, piles too much, and looks worn out in a bad way.

Even merino wool leggings, sooner or later, they lose their elasticity, and the wear pattern is not that aesthetically appealing.

So the question on my mind is this: how do we get the best materials, that have the best performance, yet aesthetically still is beautiful to us and interesting to us?

In praise of stainless steel, and other materials with extreme durability.

Perhaps what this means is find a design that you’re 80% happy with, and no matter how good the design is, sooner or later you will bore of it. But that’s OK. That’s part of the game. Then strive to hold onto it as long as humanly possible.

More interest in ephemeral, experiential or non tangible things.

10x or 1000x gains versus trivial 3-5% gains.

Currently here Mexico City, and I love it. Great street life, great street food, great restaurant, bread cafés, and very conducive to thinking.

I’ve noticed that my thinking here is much more prolific than it is back home. Why is that? My theory is that if there is an ideal amount of street life, people, and café action, it stimulates your mind.

Something I’ve learned and realized about myself: I don’t really care about price that much. Rather, I just desire the best possible thing.

Mexico City— still one of my favorite cities in the world, especially for travel and street photography:

Dear friends,

One of our greatest challenges: staying motivated in our photography.

How does one have infinite motivation in their photography? I think I got it figured out:

What is the greatest stumbling block for photographers? Motivation. The question:

How does one stay productive, motivated and encouraged throughout their photographic life?

Better be a stoic in an ugly harsh world, then epicurean in a beautiful closed world.

How does one gain in their photography? By expanding your perspective, figuratively and literally.

Expand your perspective in terms of a photographic subject matter, expand your perspective in terms of your focal length and lens, and expand your perspective in terms of how to share and publish your work.

The ethos of the innovator: becoming more unreasonable. What is reason anyways? The status quo. The innovator is extremely dissatisfied with the way things are, and desires to create a novel new solution which satisfies his or her needs.

Just make it into a PDF

A new innovation for publishing for photographers: just turn it into a PDF.

Why? PDF as the most efficient way to compact your photos. Easy to download, share and store. PDF as very open source friendly.

Pro tip: if you want to make a bunch of photos into a quick and easy PDF e-book, just select all your images in MacBook finder, and then click the button create into PDF. Afterwards, use PDF squeezer, to downsize the image to 75 dpi.

Think PDF.

Something I’ve noticed: the higher you go up in society, and the more elite and bougie people become, their clothing becomes more simple and basic, gets more expensive, exclusive, and obscure. With elite brands, the average person doesn’t know it.

If you know you know.

Super nice. Great weather, just T-shirt weather all day. Good wind, super friendly folks, restaurants are great. Feels like pre-pandemic, all nice places require temperature check upon entering, and they also make you sanitize your hands before entering.

On the street, mask compliance is quite high. I would say about 70% of people in the streets wear facemasks. Funny enough, there seems to be more Covid and sanitation precautions here Mexico City, then even back in the states.

The more obscure the better.

Optimus, optimal means ‘best’. And it seems nowadays we like the notion of ‘optimization’. But the question:

How do we apply this notion to photography?

A personal lesson: never be obedient. Especially to your parents. Rather, always do what is best for you, given your own personal instinct and gut.

Obedience to others is a vice, a sign of weakness. never let morals, and books of ethics determine and dictate your behavior, only trust your gut.

An ethical thought: I never want any man to feel guilty towards me. For example, I don’t care when other people are late for my appointment, as I just use that time to read a book on my phone. Yet a lot of people when they show up late to my appointment, they feel really bad and guilty, and I want them not to feel guilty.

Therefore maybe an idea is this: treat others almost like myself. that is, I should not feel guilty, as I don’t want others to feel guilty about me.

I’ve always been a big fan of all you can eat Korean barbecue, and more recently all you can eat shabu shabu. And every birthday I go to Fogo de Chão for unlimited Brazilian all you can eat barbecue.

But a recent realization: every time you go to all you can eat places, I typically have a stomach ache a little bit of indigestion or I’ve ate too much, or feel like I’ve eaten too little. it’s very difficult when you go to a buffet to eat just the right amount.

Applied further, perhaps we should apply this to life, and things in general?

Then just focus on philosophical introspection, arts creation, writing, and thinking.

Everything else follows.

In life, don’t optimize for comfort. In fact, perhaps a level of pain and discomfort is actually more motivational.

Typically we are taught the impulses are bad. To be impulsive is seen as a lack of willpower, which is considered a bad trait.

But what if the opposite were true? That our natural impulses were actually our wisest and best source of motivation and inspiration?

I’m about to go to Mexico City for two weeks, with Cindy and Seneca, and always the thing is trying to create the best and most optimal packing set up.

But how does one do this? I’ve traveled extensively and lived nomadically the last 10 years, and still, I’m learning as I’m going, and always trying to create things more optimal.

Some personal thoughts:

Now that I have a kid, I don’t really have the opportunity, nor the strong desire to go to a gym anymore. I would always prefer to be close to Seneca. But as somebody who is addicted to fitness and staying buff, what am I to do?

I have this notion of minimal viable work out. That is, what is the maximum bang for the buck you can get physiologically, with the least amount of time and effort.

It seems that a modern desire we have is to ‘optimize’ things, that is to make things better, more efficient, etc.

But the question:

Once you have achieved the summit of optimal, … then is the goal to strive towards *MORE OPTIMAL* for the sake of it?

Perhaps this is so. Once again, 100 years ago we never thought we would need automobiles. And after automobiles, we never thought we needed electric cars.

A photography lifestyle concept: rather than forcing ourselves to make photos, just live your life and have your photography accompany it. Photography should be a stimulus to your life and every day living, rather than the sole focus.

Or another words, your real life child is actually more important than the photos you shoot of it.

A design thought: when it comes to clothes, tools, cars accessories and things, avoid the middle. Either get something that is small, or large. Avoid the middle size.

A good friend of mine, Takeshi told me this pro tip: when it is colder, or you’re traveling, and you want to be as light as possible, just wear two merino wool T-shirts, on top of one another (layered). This is more effective than wearing a vest. and because you’re wearing merino wool, you stay warm when it is cold, and cool when it is warm.

Some thing I have discovered: almost everything in life, and even most design objects are far more similar than dissimilar. Many of the differences are superficial at best.

We new photographers of the future. What is our new ethos, our goal, and our future?

Contentment is slave morality, or a pacifying morality and ethos.

Some thing I’m really into is trying to find the perfect wallpaper for my iPhone. Same goes with my laptop wallpaper.

Ultimately what I discovered is this: best to design your own wallpaper for yourself. For example, nowadays I’m just making my own wallpapers using the Procreate app on the iPhone. And the reason I like this is that it is a double whammy: first I do something creative by designing and creating some thing, and then I also have the pride in using my own design for my own wallpaper.

Then I thought perhaps we could extend this notion to all domains.

What is the best design? The design which invigorates you. Design which pumps you up, and get you going. Perhaps this is why we also love red cars, as the color red invigorates us. This is why we also are attracted to women and red dresses, as it sparks our erotic invigoration. Apparently even men who were the color red or seen as more attractive by women.

Therefore when it comes to design, or aesthetics, Focus on what invigorates, and excites you, rather than design which is stale, boring, or depresses you.

Also with music, literature, and films, only intake and consume that which invigorates you.

What are the best shoes? The shoes which are most barefoot. Who is this I have all these L run shark shoes slippers, which are actually water shoes. They are great because they practically weigh nothing, and I could walk dozens of Miles and them without any fatigue

I think you could live a happy life anywhere you are. Yet, it seems that in order to become happier, more productive and more photographic, the more you walk the better.

Therefore I think that if you want to extract the maximum out of life, optimize for walking. Optimize your clothes, lifestyle, and occupation for walking.