A simple theory on photography:
All your photos are a stream of your own self-becoming.
What does this mean?
It ain’t about any individual single image … it is about the continuum of your photos– your stream of photos.
1. Don’t obstruct the flow.
All things considered, the best way it seems to get in the flow of photography is to put on some good noise cancelling headphones (either the BOSE ones, or the AirPods Pros) and listen to the same single album on repeat, to get yourself in the zone.
Use this zone to either review/flag/export/share your photos, or when you’re out shooting photos, don’t shoot with your iPhone (use RICOH GR III/IIIX instead), turn your phone off or to airplane mode, and focus on shooting. Even the 15 minute photography pomodoro technique works well.
2. The right tools
When I was in Vietnam I was probably in peak flow. No phone (I got rid of my phone/phone plan for nearly 2 years), no using emails (didn’t check my email for 2 years+), and my 13” MacBook Pro (maxed out, refurbished at the time, cost me $2000) was ideal. Now my laptop is starting to lag and slow down.
It seems to get the most powerful, maxed out MacBook Pro laptop (smallest size, and the most powerful for the size/weight) seems ideal. Nowadays even though I hate it, the 14” MacBook Pro seems ideal.
Essentially you don’t want your laptop or devices to slow you down.
3. No social media
Delete the gram. In today’s soft world and soft society, one of the very easy things you can do to exhibit courage is to figure out what to delete, get rid of (VIA NEGATIVA COURAGE).
Delete your Instagram, and build up your own blog instead.
4. Understand your photos as you publish and share them
To me, I don’t remember or have any personal meaning of my photos until I publish or share them.
This is what I say:
- Use Apple photos to import your JPEG photos
- Flag (select/favorite) your favorite ones
- Export them to your laptop (Dropbox folder)
- Upload them to your blog
- Publish all your photos as a ‘Gallery’, and re-review your blog post to better analyze your own photos
- Repeat
5. Insanely robust health
If you got insanely robust health (insanely great sleep, eat a shitload of beef/steak/beef ribs before sleeping) and you have a lot of great coffee in the morning (light roast, espresso, no sugar/cream/milk alternatives — straight black), put on some noise canceling headphones and got a laptop … what can’t you achieve?
6. Extreme self confidence in yourself and your photography
Once you delete instagram, social media, and no longer metricate your own photography (demetricate your photography, and demetricate yourself), then …
You will no longer fear how many likes/followers/lost followers will happen to you.
7. Keep publishing
Experiment using offline options. APPLE PAGES to design and export your book into a PDF ebook or e-zine.
Share them to your own website, blog, or just email them directly to friends and family.
8. Email newsletter
sendy.co (what I use for this email newsletter) is good for email newsletters. Setting it up is a pain, but good for the long-run.
Why? If you post a photo to Facebook or Instagram, let us say you have 60,000 followers. Perhaps only 5,000 of them might even see your post. Very low percentage. Compare this with email newsletters– nearly a 30-40% open rate (at least 100x better than social media). And with social media the algorithm is always favoring advertising (to ‘boost’ your post, you must pay money). Self hosted is the future [open source].
Like JAY Z SAYS:
Until you own yourself you can’t be free, until you own yourself you can’t be me.
WKSHPS
If this sparked any good creative ideas within you, feel free to share to a friend!