In today’s Brave New World, what is the attitude we need to thrive? Ruthless adaptation is the technique and the way.

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What do we desire and hunger for? An ever feeling of expansion, growth, fullness, and augmentation of physiological power and well-being.

How is this achieved? Great sleep, nutrition (meat), fresh air and bright sun, physical and physiological well being and strength in your muscles, a zen stoic sense of calm, fearlessness, bravado, strong and thick black coffee in the morning, brisk walks during the day, a clear mind, and an insatiable hunger to do more, experience more, and become more.

The apex of photography technique — to shoot without thinking.

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A realization and re-interpretation or re-articulation on the concept of ‘productivity’:

It isn’t actually ‘productivity’ we want, but power-expression.

I realized this becoming a parent. You suddenly have 100 fewer hours in a day to do your ‘productive’ things. And certainly once you become a parent, your productivity will go down at least 500%.

But then– is it really ‘productivity’ we want? I say no. The biggest pain being a new parent is dealing with the loss of physiological energy (thank god for sleep training). And then what brings us joy? Not being ‘productive’, but having great physiological strength and power we can express to the world via our words, thoughts, photos, art-work, or ideas!

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A concept I got from my friend Jeffrey Lam:

The great thing about living in very close walking distance to a park (2 minute walk) is that it requires little to no ‘activation energy’ to go there to workout.

Also another thing I realize now I got a kid:

If I want to quickly get in and out of the house, I need the ideal shoes with the least ‘activation energy’ to quickly slip on and off (which has ended up just being simple black slippers).

Which makes me then think:

What are some other domains in life which we can best harness the ‘least activation energy’ concept to thrive more in life?

Some ideas:

1. In the domain of photography, the least activation amount of energy in photography: Simple point and shoot compact camera (RICOH GR III) always in your front pocket, shooting in P program mode, small JPEG, high contrast black and white (the ‘set it and forget it‘ ethos). Autofocus. Ability to use with one hand. Being able to shoot without thinking. Any superfluous technical settings (like shooting manual, etc) as a positive detriment to your photography.
2. With working out, just do the simplest workout which is the easiest for you to do. For example if you’re just stuck at home, buy a kettlebell and do kettlebell swings and lifts. Or if you go to the gym, stick to the simple and highly effective workouts (deadlift, squat, floor bench press/dumbbell press).
3. With music, don’t use bluetooth headphones (having to get them to sync is always a pain in the ass). Best to just play it off your speaker. For example as I write this, its easier to just play music off my laptop speakers than trying to find my bluetooth headphones to sync it to. Same goes with playing music directly off my phone speakers (I’ve started to just play music real loud off my iPhone at max speaker setting when at the gym, so I don’t need to use headphones).

The least amount of activation energy, and the maximal amount of force expression is the goal!

ERIC

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Let us be like children and treat our photography (play) very ‘seriously’ — just have fun with photography; this is the great way to always stay inspired in your photography and never tire of it!

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Children are most drawn to human faces. We adults are the same! Lesson:

Shoot more faces!

In praise of street portraits, or photos which reveal and show the faces of your subjects!

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What we are heading towards:

Art photography.

Photography as ‘art tech’.

Why I always keep all my devices (iPhone, iPad, and MacBook laptop) in Beta Mode (always with the BETA version of all the operating systems) is this:

Life is more fun when you are always in beta-testing mode.

Also the underlying philosophy behind arsbeta.com

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Ambition is the great tonic of life. My hunger and desire to create the most epic images that the world has yet seen before.

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The camera as a technological tool to create art out of nothing, or perhaps the only ingredient we need is embodied reality, our legs, our imagination and creativity.

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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 money extravagantly on yourself, towards your own tools, arts experimentations and random speculations, then to spend it on other entities, stocks, funds, or even crypto currencies.

speculate in yourself, and invest in yourself. You are the ultimate good and aim.

Self entrepreneurship is the goal.

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

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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:

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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.

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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. Morale of the story: use Ricoh GR3 and macro mode to look for more small tiny details which we might often overlook in order to make beautifully elegant simple images.

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!

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Photolink — inspired by Chainlink (chain.link). The idea —

Uncovering and sharing how all photos are connected.

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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 micro portions (.00001 BTC Bitcoin for example)— future of payments for online creators?

Made with ‘cookbook’ theme, on Affinity Publisher:

Towards a more effective, interesting, and creative way to publish and share your photos.

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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 and like numbers.

>> See SEN. E-ZINE

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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 or motivates you or brings you joy and delight is good.

Further investigations in 3-D art, virtual reality, augmented reality, comic book and graphic book compositions, abstract art, and of course your own photography.

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:

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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 to continue shooting, creating, making and innovating in our photography, pictures or photographs, whatever you decide to call it.

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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, then what?

My answer: perhaps the insatiable desire and lust to continue creating new art and creating new things, whether in the analogue or digital is the goal.

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. Perhaps (childless) philosophers suffered from this — too much time on your hands without a simple purpose (raising a child, keeping it from starving to death, etc). Having a kid is the most straight-forward way to have a strong sense of purpose, meaning, and feedback in life.

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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:

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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 pandemic has taught me anything, it is that perhaps… your home (control center, bunker) is perhaps the best place to be. For example, I’ve realized the best coffee shop is my kitchen. Why? I have all my tools, equipment, wifi, and great coffee at home — and the ability to use the restroom without worrying someone stealing my stuff. Also with pandemic times, going indoors to a coffee shop is quite a non-concept.

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Or in other words, the effort is the reward.

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

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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!

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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 their artistic photographic production.

This means using their money to travel to shoot photos, use their money on photo books and education-workshops, using their money on camera equipment, printing their work, building their website, building up their personal brand and portfolio, etc.

And the more I think about it … there is no joy in life greater than photography. Consider how photography combines all elements towards general wellness. Walking a lot, thinking a lot, practicing a lot, the joy of composition, the joy of traveling and novelty (travel and photography), and the joy of the adrenaline in the streets (street photography).

So as a simple thought — optimize your life for photography.

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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 just ‘buy it and forget it’).

I have a very high certainty that 20 years from now, BTC and Bitcoin will be up. Frankly speaking I have no need for money or Bitcoin myself– I will just give it all to Seneca when he turns 21 (or perhaps, 33– the age where Cindy and I conceived him).

To think decades ahead is annoying, but perhaps the best solution.

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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:

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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 things which are slightly dangerous and doable-difficult, in order to become fully-one with the activity at hand). This is why I have the most zen when powerlifting, shooting street photography, or having ‘risky’ social interactions with strangers.

• The Zen of Street Photography
• ADRENALINE & ZEN

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

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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.

Perhaps put in $10,000 into your own self development is a better investment than putting into random stocks cryptocurrency Etc

Rather than investing in other uncertain ventures, know that you are the ultimate certain venture.

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.

Furthermore now that I have a baby, I cannot really walk around with a laptop. As a consequence I’ve walked around and voice dictated mostly via Siri, which ironically has been far faster and more productive than typing on the laptop, with less carpal tunnel.

So perhaps irony is that having a baby has made me more productive.

Also now that I have to take care of the baby, I have to find new and creative innovative ways to integrate baby into my lifestyle, which means going to the park and doing chin-ups while he is still strapped into the baby carrier, and also doing dips with baby strapped in. Free weight vest. This is a lot of fun and interesting to me.

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

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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 your imagery as a way to think about how dynamic your compositions are.

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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 why do you care for them? Stay focused on you and stay in tune.

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 the photos come to you.

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, devote all of your attention, energy, creative metabolism, force, motivation, and mind and soul to photography.

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.

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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, and convert it and process it later into black and white for another more dynamic look and aesthetic!

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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 let us remember motivation is all about movement.

It seems a lot of entrepreneurs want to build $1 billion unicorn company and then sell it off. But perhaps better to build up your own billion dollar first and last name brand, yourself, and never decide to sell yourself.

I just consolidated all of my cryptocurrency. Just sold off all of my DOGE, dodge coin, chain link, and DGB (digibyte) and converted it all into bitcoin.

Why did I do this? My thoughts: first of all, it is easier to remember how much bitcoin I have on the top of my head then track all these other cryptocurrency’s. Second, it will always be the gold standard, just like how Coca-Cola is and will always be the number one soda brand. Or like McDonald’s is the number 1 fast food place, or how Starbucks is and will probably always be the number 1 fast coffee place.

When randomly going on craigslist and looking at Lamborghinis, it seems a lot of people are excepting both US dollars and bitcoin and cryptocurrency for purchases or exchanges.

Furthermore, bitcoin is now so main stream even my mom and Cindy‘s mom know what it is (fake money).

If Nassim Taleb wrote an essay about bitcoin, and Tesla once accepted bitcoin to buy Tesla cars, it is here to stay. I don’t plan on ever selling my cryptocurrency, just giving it all to Seneca once his 21 years old. I am certain that 20 years from now, bitcoin and cryptocurrency and crypto technology will generally be up. In this generation Z has taught me anything, the future of payments will be your smart phone and digital phone wallet.

To master street photography for yourself and others — this is the goal.

Keep augmenting your experiences, knowledges and insights, create your own self hosted blog (wordpress.org) and share your insights, experiences and wisdom with others.

Now available for chestnut brown and velvet red. See in HAPTIC SHOP >

HENRI NECK STRAP MARK IV

Barbell health. This is a Concept I got from the philosopher Nassim Taleb. The general concept: have as much coffee and stimulants as you want first thing in the morning, but fast after afternoon. And during the day don’t eat any food until you break your fast in the evening, and when you break your fast at night, eat as much food as humanly possible.

Perhaps this is a more optimal route to health. Similarly speaking, perhaps when it comes to alcohol or drug consumption it is best to go super super hard one day but abstaining for a really long time, perhaps a month.

We could also apply this concept to sexual matters, in porn consumption, and when to release your testosterone.

This is based off the warren Buffett quote “be fearful when others are greedy, be greedy when others are fearful quote. Perhaps when people are scared when it comes to crypto and cryptocurrency, and also bitcoin prices, it is the best time to buy. This is the best time when I chose to buy more bitcoin.

Brighter is always better for devices, homes and life.

The goal is to study the masters of the past in order to improve your own photography composition and vision!

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If you desire to improve your ‘visual acuity‘, note and study composition … everywhere! In compositions when you’re watching films/cinema (in praise of watching animated films, especially Studio Ghibli films like ‘Princess Mononoke’) as you can find epic compositions everywhere!

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For so much time in my life, I have searched for the perfect and the optimal and the best x, y, z. The perfect clothes, tools, car, lifestyle, city, etc. But in fact … perhaps being perpetually dissatisfied, inexorable and impossible to placate is a good thing …

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Contrary to popular belief that once you become a parent, your ‘life is over’… in fact, your life truly *begins*.

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I am convinced– the future of photography ain’t cameras or hardware, but software– publishing software, and new innovative ways to share and publish your photos (digitally). Not social media, but publishing PDF e-books, PDF ‘zines‘ (magazines), new innovative ways to blog, and more!

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I don’t know about you, but I find the new Adobe subscription model a bit annoying. If I have multiple devices, I always get booted out, and I (always) forget my login passwords, having to reset my password, etc. Easier to just buy and own it forever — in praise of the new Affinity Publisher and Affinity Photo:

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Photography captures, encapsulates and glorifies life.

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Now that I have become a street photography OG, I have a lot of time to think, reflect and meditate on street photography. One thought — perhaps we should think of street photography as a practical practice, skill, and an active *doing*, rather than a ‘thing’ or genre.

Some thoughts:

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The key to a more productive, seamless and frictionless life.