Come visit!

I love Phnom Penh!

Would you trade $100k to get a 500, 600, 700 pound deadlift?

Your body, your muscles, your physique and health/strength as the ultimate wealth:

(more…)

Currently in Phnom Penh Cambodia and I love it!

For myself, I personally desire to use photography as a form of leverage to change and move the world.

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Naive is good

The world-weary say–

To attempt to change the world and move the world is vain.

I say —

Even if your photos can change the heart or soul of 1 other human being on planet earth, it is all worth it.

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Lever it.

As I said prior in my ‘photography leverage‘ post, I believe that your #1 strength (photography) can indeed change and shift the world.

Why? Photos are a universal language. It don’t matter if you speak Korean, Khmer, Vietnamese, Spanish, English, etc — everyone can look at a photo and understand it. Even Seneca looks at books of photos with kids and can imitate and mimic the expressions of the kids in the photos.

Why photography?

Still in today’s hyper-modern world, I don’t know if people truly understand the power of photography.

Consider photography — the uber-immediate visual impact you get from photos. Also, imputing your soul into your photos. Whenever anyone looks at a photo by you, they can see you.

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Pix or it didn’t happen

Also with photography, it is a form of proof. Shooting photos or videos (videos are just moving photos), you have better ‘proof’ of your existence, what you do, etc.

Perhaps everyone should strive to become an ‘influencer’

My funny heuristic:

If someone calls themselves an ‘influencer’, they are not influential.

But what does it mean to be ‘influential’? I think a more interesting idea:

Influential means things that flows out of you (flex).

Thus as a photographer, if images flow out of you, you are an ‘influential’ photographer. Once again, our rule:

If we publish one photo, or one thing, which even has a .00001% chance of influencing another human being on planet earth (out of 7+ billion), it is worth it.

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What drives me?

What drives me and what drives you?

For me, I believe it is a hunger for adventure. Even photography is just a shortcut for adventure.

Currently here in Phnom Penh Cambodia, and I love it! It is like a low-key Hanoi– with lots of ‘up and coming’ developments, and the economy is on the up and up. To be able to witness these things firsthand, make photos is one of the greatest joys of existence.

I am glad I was born

As much as we may sometimes bemoan existence and the scars of our past, I believe —

I am (very) glad I was born.

Why? The joy of existence is being able to explore the world, have kids, make art, and also having the ability to impact and influence the lives of others.

For example the power of a blog, or an email newsletter. Being able to reach thousands of folks from all around the globe. I have started to realize more and more, the best way to maximize your reach as a photographer isn’t through social media, or even YouTube — it is through your own blog, your own podcast, your own email newsletter. The trifecta.

You are the full-stack human

Something else I believe in:

Don’t just pigeon-hole yourself into photography– share it all.

For example my passion for weight lifting (powerlifting, deadlifts, etc), my passion for muscles, and also meat. For me my whole blog is more of my personal soul and lifestyle, and my blog is simply a mind-stream and image-stream of my personal life.

I like the idea that with blogs, you can simply share your own life photo stream. You are the stream.

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How to motivate your photography

To motivate means to move. To move physically or emotionally.

Making photos is pretty much all about leaving the house, going on mini-adventures, and photographing the journey along the way.

To better motivate your emotions in photography, I say simply photograph those whom you love. Photograph yourself (don’t you love yoruself?) your kids, your wife, your partner, your friends, anyone who you have an emotional connection with.

Like my friend Josh White said —

We will not care about all these photos of strangers we shoot at the end of our lives, it will be the photos that we shot of our loved ones.

Love on, shoot on!
ERIC

Level up your photography

Learn how to make photos you are proud of at an ERIC KIM EXPERIENCE >>>

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If this gave you any turbo thoughts, feel free to forward or share to a friend!

ERIC KIM NEWS

Just arrived in Phnom Penh, after taking a Korean air 12 hour flight from LAX to Incheon airport, and Incheon to Phnom Penh.

The first thought is Phnom Penh looks a lot like Hanoi. People are incredibly friendly, and I recommend staying in a nice hotel.
The Phnom Penh airport is very nice, clean and modern, and was very easy to get through.

The local coffee is also very good!

The palace gate hotel is a good value. Also good to organize airport van pickup!

Also, looks like the Chinese influence here is strong. Lots of local Chinese newspapers and banks here.

The infinite motivation to keep shooting, reviewing and analyzing your photos and eternally delighting in the process. Autotelic photography — you are automatically self driven and self motivated in the process!

Dear friends, a thought on my mind this morning; how to leverage yourself as a photographer.

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“Give me a spot to move and I shall move the world!” – Archimedes

One of the greatest windfalls in my life was discovering Archimedes. The notion of Archimedes lever is that if you know what your lever is, how to adjust the length of your lever, and where to stand and place your fulcrum, you can move the world.

Consider how the ancient pyramids of Giza were built; probably a series of pulleys, levers, and wheels.

What is the notion of lever in photography?

I believe that everyone has a certain strength as a photographer. It is different for everybody.

For example for myself, my ultimate lever in photography is probably street photography. Why? It is a combination of my extroverted attitude, my joy of interacting with people and strangers, and my personal ethos of being lightweight.

Also, my joy of the visual. I love all art, but out of all of them, visual artwork is my greatest joy. As a child, I loved drawing. I even got hand selected to join a special art school at a young age, hand selected by one of my teachers who saw my gift as a child, yet I never attended because my family ended up having to move.

How to identify your strength

This is a tricky thing; how do you identify your strength as a photographer, in photography?

Several ways you could think about this. The first is to just think about what brings you with the greatest joy. Without thinking about the external, internally, what is it that drives you and motivates you in photography? Is it your joy of exploration? Is it your joy of seeing how your photos will manifest? Is it your joy of creating artwork? Is it your creative outlet?

There is no right or wrong answer here, rather, it is simply an accuracy thing. Try to think accurately what really motivates you. This is one of the great steps in philosophy. Self-knowledge.

How to leverage your photography

Once you first figure out what your real motivation in photography is, then you can begin to exploit it, and to maximize it. A simple thought is share as you learn, and share the process. For example my initial motivation in street photography was to figure out how to actually do it and how to overcome and conquer my fear in shooting street photography. For me, 99.9% of the difficulty in street photography was how to overcome the initial hesitation of shooting it. Fear conquering.

At the time, when I first started blogging around 2010, there were lots of websites on street photography, and lots of great street photographs on the Internet, but no blogs or websites outlining how to do it. Also this was still the early days YouTube, even before they were advertisements. Therefore for me, starting my YouTube channel was simply a way to explore and demonstrate how to do street photography. My initial street photography gopro point of view videos were popular, because it showed how street photography was done in the real world. Nobody ever showed you this unique perspective before.

Simplify the process

Think about it; if you first introduced photography to a kid, would you teach them all the boring manual settings, and how to shoot in raw? Of course not. You would just set it to the simplest settings, and just teach the kids how to point and click the shutter. Even funny enough, I’ve discovered that my son Seneca, even my young niece and nephew prefer to use a camera with a physical button, rather than using an iPhone or a smart phone. Why? I think there is a primal joy in using haptic things, and haptic buttons, and haptic feedback. For example, Seneca at a year and a half loves my Lumix G9 camera, with all of the buttons, tilting LCD screen, and the physical shutter sound. He also loves to turn on and off my Ricoh GR, and shoot pictures.

Why I don’t like interacting with adults

A lot of things are ruined once we try to make it “professional,” and try to do it in a “legitimate” way. What is adulthood? Stealing the confidence of our children. Consider, how fearless and confident kids are, but as they get older, they are trained by their parents and society to become more fearful, more hesitant, and less self-confident.

For example, see how young kids dance and wiggle their bodies to music without self consciousness, but once we become adults, we think we must look “cool“ when we are dancing, or have special training and dancing. My personal aspiration is that Seneca gets older, I want to augment his self-confidence, rather than allow external structures to steal it.

Just leverage it

Truth be told, there are certain environments which are more conducive to our photography. But — I say,

Leverage your environment to photography to the maximum, regardless of how boring or poor your environment is.

For example, if you live in a suburban hell hole, just leverage that. Shoot photos of interesting houses in the suburbs, shoot selfies of yourself, look for rust and decay, and just shoot whatever’s interesting to you before your very eyes.

The greatest motivation in photography is maximizing your photography regardless of where you are.

SHOOT ON!
ERIC

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Leverage your photography to the next level

If you are hungry to leverage of target to the next level, invest in an ERIC KIM EXPERIENCE

1. September 30-October 2nd: DISCOVER YOUR SEOUL: ERIC KIM SEOUL SOUTH KOREA STREET PHOTOGRAPHY TRAVEL EXPERIENCE 2022
2. November 5th: DOWNTOWN LA MINIMALISM WORKSHOP
3. November 12th: VANCOUVER STREET PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE

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Shoot more, become more

HAPTIC PHOTOGRAPHY OUTFITTERS:

1. MUSE BY KIM: Your ultimate muse.
2. HENRI SHOULDER STRAP: Always strapped and ready to go

HAPTIC IT.

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Other random things on my mind

1. Packing, getting ready for a 2 to 3 month long excursion to Phnom Penh Cambodia, South Korea, and maybe Vietnam.
2. Really enjoying the trap bar deadlift, just did an easy 455 pounds at the gym. The only downside is a lot of the trap bars at gyms have very short sleeves, which means it is a little bit more difficult to progress your weights, after a certain point.
3. A very optimistic thought: I might actually finally be stronger now than I was before Seneca was born. To me this is a hugely motivational thought, because my health was very poor after his birth, and in the early days. Now, I feel like I am in the clear, and ready to go on the up and up.

What next?

1. Make your own website/blog via bluehost.com, and install wordpress.org. A website is the ultimate leverage for your photography, whether analog or digital.
2. Decide and acknowledge yourself that your current situation is not optimal for photography, but disregard it, and strive to maximize your photography anyways.

Share your knowledge

Regardless of how experienced or inexperienced you are, you always have something to share. I encourage you to teach photography, either at a local center, at your local school, or any sort of organization which is helpful towards kids and adults. Teaching is beneficial for them and for yourself. I like the idea that when one teaches, two learn.

Learn more

Start here >

Interesting thoughts?

If this gave you any interesting thoughts, feel free to forward to a friend!

ERIC KIM NEWS LINK

How I Hype Myself Up Before a One Rep Max #HYPEFOCUS

FOCUS:

HYPE FOCUS

EDITED:

The upside of a trap bar– better leverage.

The world is not zero sum. A better way to succeed is to share information, share your information. Information is everything.

”I got that god power, that’s my leverages. I got that holy water, that’s my beverages.” – Kanye West

Assuming Archimedes was right, then, the secret to better moving the world is to not necessarily just improve your raw strength, but to improve your leverages.

For example, trap bar for deadlift instead of conventional or even sumo style. Or to squat more, no need to go super low “or go parallel, or break parallel” for your max attempts. Also, do heavy dumbbell press instead of bench press — superior leverage. Also for chin-ups, the neutral grip instead of the overhand or underhand grip. The neutral grip as the most natural and best leveraging grip (also why in theory, trap bar for deadlift should be superior — no need for a mixed grip for max weights).

Also when convenient, use kettlebells. The most simple leverages.

Best to use new technologies, approaches and methods and innovations to maximize you. For example, the internet as leveraging the individual by 100000x.

Or email newsletter — it blows my mind how I can send a message directly to 10,000+ individuals at once, instead of the insanely atrocious social media delivery rates (10-100-1000 individuals at best organically).

Or espresso machine and automatic grinder — better leverage technology to increase your coffee and caffeine intake.

Or flying instead of driving, leverage technology to move 10000x faster.

Therefore, spend more time thinking about your personal strengths, and maximizing and exploiting them. Continue to maximize your leverages.