Not owning a car
What if you said Tristan that you were not allowed to buy any car, no matter how cheap or expensive?
Even if you became a billionaire or a trillionaire, you were not allowed to buy the Porsche, the Tesla, the Lamborghini, the Bentley, the Rolls-Royce, etc.
Instead, you were only allowed to rent cars, Uber, or just borrow a car.
I am very bearish on the future of fiat currency in America. If I received a salary, and just worked a normal job, I will just funnel all of my salary into cryptocurrency.
The less predictable your life, the better.
Crypto currency. Travel.
Pain is actually one of our best instructors. We learn what not to do through pain.
Dear friends,
Creative photography is our pursuit. Some quick ideas for you:
I see the screenshot as the new form of ‘meta-art’. That is —
When you screenshot something, it is like you’re shooting a photo of it … but it is a ‘meta’ photo of something.
Because if you think about it, when you photograph something, you elevate it, you honor it. By screenshotting something, you signal its importance.
Something I did was in ‘the devil is in the details‘, I just looked through my WordPress library of all my photos labeled ‘screenshot’, and just made a little mini gallery and series of all the photos I screenshotted the details I found interesting in my photos. Perhaps you can do the same and upload it to your own blog.
I also consider photography to be my painting. What this means is that I LOVE seeing rust, patina, decay, and other ‘wabi sabi’ details (wabi sabi means something becomes more beautiful as it ages).
This gives us much creative leeway as photographers, because it means that we can approach photography abstractly. Photography ceases to be about clarity — it becomes more about emotion, mood, and your soul you impute into your photos.
Shoot more photos (macro, high contrast black and white) or just photos in general which highlight and focus shapes, forms, tones, rust, textures, grit and grain.
Car design, architecture, home design, shoe/sneaker design, any type of design.
The reason is that we can ‘cross pollinate‘ much when it comes to studying other forms of design. If we consider that photographers are designers, then it means:
Study ALL design.
All design or any design which inspires you is good design.
Open source is the future.
Sketches are good. By sketching your compositions you better understand them, and can better imbue these lessons into your brain, so you can see them when you’re out shooting.
Read more: Why make pictures?
7 samurai. Anything by Akira Kurosawa is good. 7 samurai compositions.
Cinema should be art, or just moving photos and paintings.
Learn to see more creatively at ERIC KIM EXPERIENCE
Just stick to monochrome for a decade. Maybe 2!
Why do I love black and white so much? The reason:
It is the ultimate ‘creative constraint‘.
Creative constraints are perhaps the secret to creativity in photography. As David Alan Harvey said:
Too many options will ruin your life.
If this sparked any creative ideas within you, feel free to forward to a friend!
When things don’t work out the way you wanted today, you could always try tomorrow.
Perhaps the best tesla is a model 3, white, lowest range, no additional options, black interior. The bare-bones one. Super base.
What is the ideal diet for entrepreneurs? I think I got it figured out.
I believe the ideal diet for an entrepreneur is:
The espresso machine as an integral part of the entrepreneur’s toolkit. Perhaps more important than your phone, laptop, camera, etc.
Some thing which interests me is the tactics of everyday life. That is, following a strict routine and plan is a bad one. Why? If you’re actually intelligent and tactical, it is more wise to iterate based on every single scenario.
For example, I had this grand master plan of taking Seneca to the park, and then some other places. But then I had to go to the bathroom, And Seneca actually looked very sleepy, so it was actually more strategic and tactical for me to just go back home, nap him in his own bed, and for me to use the restroom at home. And then because I had about an hour to spare, because Seneca was asleep, I just decided to go to the gym.
And then when I was at the gym, I planned on deadlifting 405 pounds. But after doing a single rep of 365, I knew that my body wasn’t feeling it, so I just re-racked the weights, and I might just attempt it in another few days in the future.
A simple life strategy is to obey your body. That is, your body is 1000x times wiser than your ‘mind’, and other heuristics and philosophical tactics.
You never know until you do it, until you’re in the moment. Be tactical and strategic — just follow your gut. No clock, no rules.
Another very simple thought:
Think about what your end-goal is.
For me when it comes to child rearing, I desire for Seneca to become the most physically intelligent boy of all time. I don’t see him as a baby– I see him as a small man in training. Thus my tactics for him tend to be more Spartan, cold and hard, rather than ‘babying’ him.
Quite possibly the most essential thing is nutrition and sleep. They recognize this for children and babies, but why not adults?
The ideal nutrition: meat. Lots of fatty, highly saturated, high in cholesterol meat. Meat as a steroid (cholesterol as a steroid). Any foods which get your testosterone up are good.
Beef ribs, bone marrow, beef neck bone, beef liver, eggs, etc.
Even Seneca, in some funny ways I turned him into a ‘carnivore kid’ or a ‘keto baby’. Even in the early days, when he first started to eat ‘solid’ (non-puree foods), I started to feed him bone marrow as early as humanly possible (he loved it). I got the bone marrow idea from the Iliad– apparently either Hector of Achilles was fed bone marrow as a child.
The law can be gamed. However you cannot game or play your own inner code of ethics and morals.
My new aspiration: maximize my physical fitness, my physiological strength, endurance, and my propensity for enjoying time outdoors, ideally in the direct sun.
Indoor gyms being a depressing place.
Solution: spending more time outdoors, at the park, at the outdoor shopping mall, and even working out outdoors at the closest park with good workout gym equipment. Ideally the park has rings!
A very cool thing I witnessed when visiting the UTC outdoor shopping mall in San Diego (La Jolla)— this great 24 hour fitness outdoor fitness training area. Imagine being able to enjoy doing deadlifts and squats outdoors, in the wonderful sun! I hate working out indoors.
A simple thought: what if going to the gym was more about training your mind, and when pursuing intellectual matters, you are actually training your body?
For example, it is good to be nervous before you try a new personal record attempt in a one rep max in powerlifting. For example, being or feeling a little bit nervous before attempting a new PR you have never attempted in sumo deadlift, the nervousness is good, as it increases your adrenaline, focus, and your ability to successfully hack yourself to do it.
Not a car or Tesla. Moar Bitcoin!
Also the idea of selling your car and using that money to buy bitcoin is actually a good idea. On craigslist, I’ve already seen people start dumping their model S plaids, and also selling their Tesla model three cars in order to buy crypto and bitcoin instead.
Other day I visited a Tesla showroom and spoke with one of the sales people, he told me that one of their very rich customers who has literally bought and owned every single car just sold his Tesla model S plaid, and just bought a normal long range Tesla model X instead.
Also my very rich and successful pediatrician just sold his Tesla model S, was not impressed with the model S plaid, and just bought a Porsche 911 instead (cement grey color).
We should stop this nonsense of ‘sports sedans’. Just get a coupe or nothing.
How to breathe new life into your photography:
The first idea:
Just shoot it all.
Make yourself a fully integrated, vertical-integration solution. You make the photos, you process the photos, you upload the photos, and you publish the photos, and share and market yourself.
Most photographers learn how to do the first few (how to operate their own camera, how to make their own photos, then how to process their own photos on their laptop). But the last stage they are lacking– the courage to publish themselves, to ‘self promote’ themselves, and to put themselves out there.
In fact, I like the idea of ‘marketing’, because the notion of a market is quite ancestral. Also, markets are fun! I love to go there to just people watch, check out new products, and make street photos of strangers I find interesting.
Something I think about a lot– always back to first principles. Rather than think:
What is the best way for me to do x, y, z?
Better to think:
How SHOULD we do x, y, z, — wherefore, for whom, and why?
Aristotle and first principles. The root of our philosophical undertakings.
By becoming a more philosophical photographer, it will challenge you to re-think and combat the status-quo, and help you innovate, innovate new ways and under-takings and ways of approaching things and your photography.
Apple Photos over Adobe Lightroom. Extra small JPEG. RICOH GR IIIX.
In striving to simplify things, your photography and life … how can you not innovate?
PHOTOGRAPHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP MANUAL by ERIC KIM — PDF DOWNLOAD
Also–
Become more as a photographer:
If this sparked any creative ideas within you, feel free to forward to a friend!
In today’s cruel world, the most ‘fair’ way to succeed is to have the courage to market yourself.
It is not often in everyday life we can exhibit physical courage (besides powerlifting). However, when we decide to make certain design decisions which will get huuuuge backlash (pretty much every design decision Steve Jobs proposed and held onto), and now more design decisions from Elon Musk for TESLA and Kanye for his products, I say:
Exhibit more balls and courage, especially when it comes to design.
For the sacrifice of ‘functionality‘ or mass appeal. Follow your own artistic, creative, and design vision.
Whenever you go to a restaurant and ask the server what they recommend, it is always the (over-priced) mediocre option (chicken).
Better to say:
If these were your kids, what did you do, or what *would* you do?
Or
If you were in my shoes, what would you do?
Or
What is *YOUR* personal favorite?
Something I have learned:
For the name of progress, we will need to be ruthless and cut functionality in order to advance.
For example, whenever we start using new technologies, it will never work the way things *used* to work. And perhaps we should strive to overcome this ‘having to learn new things’ bias.
For example, TESLA and cars. For the Model 3/Y, the single central touchscreen is a bit bizarre and new and unusual. But perhaps in order to progress, this is a sacrifice we must make.
Even with WordPress, there are always these new improvements, changes, and advancements. I don’t quite understand them, and it is annoying to have to learn new ways, but in striving to figure out how things *now* work, I actually end up being able to innovate new methods and techniques.
Even my new joy with the new steering wheel (yoke steering) on the Tesla Model S and X. I like the idea you can focus on driving, and not have to lift your hands to do anything. Also, aesthetically it looks super cool. It challenges what a steering wheel in a car (especially in the world of automation, self driving cars, and AI), what a steering wheel *SHOULD* be for?
My critique of Apple, especially the new 14” MacBook Pro:
It has sacrificed innovate for the sake of ‘function’ and ‘functionality’ and ‘power’.
For example, getting rid of the Touch Bar was a cowardly design decision. After getting accustomed to the touchbar on my 13” MacBook Pro Touch Bar (I actually really like the touchbar, and the deep integration with apple products and Apple Photos for the favorite/flag button), and the ability to seamlessly change audio and program/re-program the buttons to my liking. Real designers have deep courage.
Dear friends,
A simple thought:
You are what you photograph.
Similarly speaking:
Just photograph your own life.
Let us take this thought. What does it imply, and how does it implicate us?
It means you do not separate your everyday life from your photography — you simply integrate it all.
A simple thought:
Do not separate your photography into genres.
Every single genre in photography is a trap.
Why I am anti genre in photography:
It limits what you can (and ‘cannot’) photograph.
Another simple idea:
Photograph all your meals, your coffees, and what you consume during the day.
‘You are what you eat’ is a simple piece of wisdom. Perhaps we should apply it to photography as well.
The reason why social media is a trap:
The strategy is to just upload (1) of your best photos a day, in order to maximize your likes in photography.
I say share MORE photos. In a single blog post, why not share a hundred, 200, 300, 400, 500 or 1000 photos? It is a simple way to 1000x your photography.
What to do with all the photos? Simple: put them together in an iMovie slideshow (.5 seconds per photo), and make your own beats in garage band to put them together.
Think of your photography as a continuum– a stream of images.
Whenever I’ve made a breakthrough in my photography it has always been born out of some sort of frustration. Thus let us use our annoyances, our personal frustrations, and our dis-motivations to actually motivate us!
ERIC
What futures await your photography?
Perhaps it does all suck, but the thought:
If we just accept that it all sucks, how can we make the best out of it?
The more I can let Seneca touch stuff, the more he learns and understands.
Why I like hitting my limit: it actually gives me assurance and quality information on what my “one rep max†is. And give myself a week to rest and re-strengthen myself, eat more beef ribs and eggs and try again next week!
Or in other words, I can sleep better at night knowing what my limit is, and my personal happiness and joy in having the courage to attempt my limit!
The more you practice your strength, strength practicing, the stronger you’ll become, in the more accustomed you will become to the movements.
The upside of cheaper looking stuff, like my iPhone SE— less concern about it getting stolen! Same goes with more “plain Jane†cars.
Some ancient saying, which I read from the book, “LIFT†by Daniel Kunitz.
Rather than thinking about what has been done in the past and iterate based on that, think carte blanche (first principles) and think:
How *SHOULD* it be?
My critique of Porsche 911:
It relies too much on tradition and the past.
Like Nietzsche said — timelessness should be rejected.
After studying composition much, I think I can *see* composition before my eyes, kind of like photography augmented reality (AR) but for composition. I actually see these red lines when I’m out and about:
A serve is like a one rep max.
What I desire– a truly ZEN driving experience. No distractions, no devices, no touch screens, no music, no LCD screens, etc. Only a pure driving experience– manual transmission, no CD player, no superfluous things.
Get a GoPro BONES— the ultimate minimalistic design. No LCD screen. The truly zen camera.
I intend to use this for my street photography GoPro POV videos, and vlogging. I don’t have a drone, but I intend to just use this for my self.
Just ordered one with my PayPal balance (cool I can buy stuff on the GoPro.com website with PayPal!) Next day shipping. Excited to test it out!!! To me this is 1000x more interesting, and exciting than even the newest iPhone Pro.
A fun zen thought:
Can they invent a new iPhone or Apple device that has no screen?
Also– I desire a car *without* a touch screen. Can there be any new cars made in the present or the future without LCD screens or touch screens?
