If your passion is photography and you desire to monetize your passion and if you have the opportunity to get a free education, I encourage you to go to business school (instead of photography or art school).

But this is a huge thing:

Never go to school if you’re going to go into debt.

If you can do work-study, get scholarships, do it. Never ever ever go into debt, even for the most seemingly “great” opportunities. Debt is the devil; perhaps even worse.

Something I’m thinking a lot about entrepreneurship:

Why scale?

Or in other words:

Why is scaling up seen as desirable?

And also– are there hidden downsides of having a really big scale?

The best life is one ripe with photography.

Delete and stop using social media; build your own platform instead!

A philosophy from my buddy Nietzsche:

How could you live your life in accordance as if you were to live it indefinitely, on loop, and to think this was the most sublime thing in existence?

A practical thought:

If you want to invest in a new creative tool, better to buy a new RICOH GR III (instead of a new iPhone).

This is my rationale:

A new way of thinking about life:

I will optimize my life to live in accordance to myself. To optimize my life which is best for me. To optimize my life to not put unnecessary stress on myself (only positive stress, ‘eustress‘). To live more like a child– playfully, to challenge myself, and to live life to the fullest.

To ignore conventional wisdom. To discover the wisdom which works best for myself.

Practical ideas:

I want to go beyond the notion of ‘creativity’ as this “innate ability to make novel connections and to think differently”, into thinking about creativity as frequency and power of creating new art-works.

Beyond content marketing. Let us strive to create substantive ‘substance’ (not “content”).

Currently enrolled for ARSBETA.COM in Y Combinator’s “Startup School”, and thinking of Kevin Hale’s question for Week 1 lecture:

What is your unfair advantage?

A simple principle in life:

Share your dopeness (awesomeness) with others.

Through art, we desire to exert (ex+press) our inner artistic power.

An idea inspired by Cindy:

Is the purpose of photography to remember or to forget?

Once you’ve retired (no longer need to do toilsome labor in order to pay your rent and groceries), what is the “optimal” (best) way to live your life?

You make photos, you make illustrations, you make videos, you make music. You derive artistic stimulus from all sources: from listening to music, from films, from dance, from exercise, from philosophy — from anything!

To develop to the fullest extent– grow more variegated. Consider a tree. You have a singular trunk, but your roots grow deeper into the soil, and your branches continue to multiply, and grow higher and higher (while growing wider).

Strive to master MANY artistic domains in life!

Furthermore, strive to engage all forms of knowledge. Science, art, humanities– it is all good!

All arts which inspire and stimulate you are good!

And above all; focus on artistic creation, and your own artistic productivity!

ERIC

Also another idea:

Spend more time looking at your own photos instead of watching movies or Netflix?

As visual artists, perhaps we can only maximally thrive if we are continually making new images, every day– perhaps all-day?

If you desire more freedom in your life, strive to become more frugal.

The first version of PHOTOGRAPHY COMPOSITION MANUAL (download as PDF).

What is the motive force which induces us to photograph?

Some ideas:

1. Desire to immortalize a moment. Great joy and thanksgiving towards reality.
2. Desire to create visual art works. Photography as faster and more efficient than painting or drawing.
3. Desire to play. Photography as fun visual gymnastics if shapes, colors, forms, compositions. To photograph is like playing a musical instrument.
4. Desire to share our perspective and viewpoint with others. To signal and educate others what we consider beautiful. The photographer as the value judge of beauty.

When in doubt, just share it.

Even if there is a 1% chance you can help someone else, it is worth sharing!

A thought:

Many of us try to predict trends, or identify trends in order to follow them.

But what if we can create our own ‘reality distortion field’ (Steve Jobs), and create our own trend?

Do your photos take your breath away?

Recently when viewing my RICOH GR III photos on iPad Pro, I took my own breath away.

What is your passion in life? If you don’t know what your passion is, should you have a passion?

If you know what your passion is, should you pursue it? To what extent? Should you try to monetize your passion, or not?

Let me essay some of these thoughts:

To photograph is to live.

The more you photograph, the more you live.

The more you shoot, the more you wonder (and wander), the more hidden beauty you discover in life.

Photography is life.

Never go anywhere without your camera around your neck or on your wrist (or at least in your front pocket).

“‘Til you own your own you can’t be free. ‘Til you’re on your own you can’t be me. How we still slaves in 2016?” – JAY Z (I Got the Keys song)

Until you own your platform, you don’t own your photos (or yourself).

Photography as Self-Expression

Photography is a tool to “express” yourself (ex+press — to press out your soul into the world, via your photos).

If you desire to thrive as a photographer, #deleteinstagram and join ARSBETA.COM instead.

A thought when walking around today:

Do you love being alive?

Are you living your life in a way in which you suck out the marrow of reality? Where you deify existence, and being alive? Or are you living in a way simply to kill the time, and to live an existence as un-miserably as possible — waiting until you die?

Perhaps we prefer gritty black and white photos that don’t look like reality, because we need to fill in the gaps, and engage our imagination?

The upside of gritty, blurry, and out-of-focus photos. The less ‘photo realistic’ the images look, the better?

There is no ultimate ‘truth’ — only varying degrees of “truthiness” (degrees of truth).

Perhaps it is our evolutionary advantage that we delight in visual change. Visual change in landscapes, our environment, our fashion, our cars, our objects, and the visual art works we consume and create!

Active thinking: thoughts which arise when you let your mind go empty and fallow.

Reactive thinking: you must read or expose yourself to external stimuli in order to think.

Something I’m very interested in: the intersection of photography, technology, entrepreneurship, and philosophy. I feel this is very fascinating ground which hasn’t (yet) been fully analyzed in detail.

Are You Strong Enough, or Too Weak?

A way to think about life —

Don’t be afraid of failure or hurting/injuring yourself. Instead, just focus on building your own strength and become strong enough to pursue great tasks and aims in your life.

Generally speaking, buying books will always be a better investment than buying photo gear (#buybooksnotgear).

But at times, I feel a bit conflicted about photo books. In some regards, I think photo books are over-rated. And some ways, photo books are underrated.

Let me use this essay as an opportunity to explicate some of my thoughts and personal philosophies on photo books:

The RICOH GR II is a perfect camera. But the good news– the RICOH GR III is even better.

RICOH GR III in high contrast monochrome JPEG setting is epic.

Super enjoying the RICOH GR III; which gave me a thought:

Perhaps we should only ever purchase a camera which we can imagine using forever?

Of course nothing is meant to last forever. And of course digital photography is moving so quickly, that to never buy another digital camera ever again is also a foolish idea. If I plan on shooting photos until I’m 120 years old, I want new technologies in photography to be created!

But as photographers and creators, we need to love the cameras and tools we use. Keep experimenting with your equipment until you find a few tools you love, then stick with them! If you just feel “meh” about the tools or belongings you have, ditch them.

Hasselblad: killing it with insane innovations in digital medium format, and digital backs for their old school Hasselblad V system.

Life is about growth and progress. But a question which often gnaws at the back of our head:

“Am I making progress in my photography, artistic innovation, and life?”

Life is all upside, no downside.

Based on my thoughts:

1. Longevity: Ability to continue to innovate in their photography over decades. To keep shooting until they die (Andre Kertesz).
2. Self-confidence: Making photographic art works to impress themselves, not others.
3. Refusal to allow themselves be trapped within a genre.
4. To think of photography less about capturing reality. More delight in artistic form, tones–a more artistic approach.
5. Relatively simple, direct, yet elegant compositions. No need for “visual gymnastics” to “flex” their photographic skills.

Simple tips to get you going!

How does a photographer thrive? By shooting more (new) photos!

The world is your visual oyster. Exploit reality by shooting all the new photos you can!

Testing the 21mm ultra-wide angle adapter for the new Ricoh GR III, and really enjoying it!

What if our goal and motive as photographers was to capture the fullest extent of life, while we’re still alive?

To photograph people, nature, urban landscapes, plant life, and all of life?

When I look at artwork, I like artwork which “moves” me– quite literally moves me. Which encourages me to move around, dance, and go out and make more of my own artwork!

An idea: for fun, turn your photos into animated GIFs!

Refuse yourself to become a prisoner to your past self, your past artistic style, etc.

Free DOWNLOAD of Eric Kim Stock Photos (Volume 1).

Thanks to Cindy for the idea. The basic notion is this:

If you need free photographs or illustrations for a book cover, design, etc — these are for you.

Practical ideas:

It seems that success as a photographer in today’s brave new world of photography is 90% dependent on marketing skill, and only 10% photographic skill. It seems this is the truth.

Now, how are you to succeed and stand-out? Here are some practical ideas I’ve learned through my decade+ experience in photography, marketing, philosophy, and life: