In real life! Just go to the park, go to the mall, go to the shopping center, go to the gym, just congregate anywhere where there are people!

Beef yourself up, beef up your kids!

My thought on good parenting, is essentially just feed them more beef! Always have it with you!

I love the Ricoh GR with a passion but the issue is they always break. The longevity of a Ricoh GR camera is very poor.

Therefore, maybe a strategy instead is buying a camera that has an interchangeable lens and body. For example I really like the Panasonic Lumix G9, and if you want a cheap lens, you should just get a Panasonic Lumix 14 mm pancake lens, which is roughly a 28 mm full frame equivalent.

Pricewise, just getting a lumix g9 body is pretty cheap, in the $800-$900 range. And the Panasonic Lumix 14 mm lens is really cheap, only around 200 bucks. So in all, by thousand dollars, for a Lumix G9 and lens, which is the same price of a Ricoh GR 3X!

Some of the upsides of the Lumix G9 camera is that it is very good for video and vlogging, and I find the dynamic monochrome with grain and contrast added to the max mix very beautiful JPEG images.

The downside of the Lumix G9 camera is that it is really big and heavy, but maybe is it worth it if the longevity is better?

Vlogging?

From an entrepreneurial perspective, it seems that in terms of media media production, vlogging is the way.

EQUIPMENT by KIM

There is no “perfect” camera. Don’t fall into GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) and falsely believe that buying a new camera will make you a better photographer.

If you’re not feeling inspired in your photography, I recommend you to buy books, not gear. Also check out these 75+ Inspirational Photo Books You Gotta Buy. You can also download my free books.

Equipment Articles >

1. GOPRO BONES IS THE GAME-CHANGER
2. ERIC KIM RICOH GR IIIX REVIEW
3. The Optimal Camera
4. Material Matter
5. Just buy it and forget it.
6. Products will not bring you joy
7. DARK GEAR.
8. EVEN THOUGH WE GET THE BEST, WE’RE STILL NOT SATISFIED.
9. HARDWARE IS THE FUTURE.
10. iPad Pro over iPhone Pro
11. Is Leica Overrated?
12. Fujifilm X-PRO 3 over Leica M10
13. Equipment Creep
14. Once You Got Perfect, Then What?
15. WHY I LOVE RICOH GR III
16. One-Handed Photography
17. Why Rangefinders Are Overrated
18. WHY YOU MUST BUY RICOH GR III
19. The Best Equipment is The Equipment You Already Have
20. The Best Camera is the One You Shoot with the Most
21. Why RICOH GR III is the Best Camera
22. Use and Abuse Your Gear!
23. RICOH is the new LEICA
24. In Praise of Banging around Your Camera
25. Electric Cameras
26. Why the RICOH GR III is Better than the Leica Q2
27. Buy a new Ricoh GR III, not a New iPhone
28. The Best Headphones are In-Ear Monitors
29. Are Point-and-Shoot Cameras the Best Cameras?
30. Gear Adaptation Syndrome
31. Satisfice
32. What is the Benefit of “Standalone” Digital Cameras?
33. All Cameras are Good Cameras
34. Why The Future of Photography is Software
35. RICOH MAFIA
36. Use and Abuse Your Gear!
37. Why RICOH GR II is the Best Street Photography Camera
38. The Best Photography/Vlogging Equipment Setup
39. My Favorite Travel Street Photography Equipment
40. Zen Body-Hand-Mind Connection with the Camera
41. Why It Doesn’t Matter What Camera You Shoot With
42. What is the Best Camera and Lenses for Street Photography?
43. The Best Travel Street Photography Equipment 2018
44. 6 Lessons I’ve Learned After Shooting All the Expensive Cameras
45. How to Make Good Photos on a Shitty Camera
46. Why I Shoot With One Camera and One Lens
47. My Travel Equipment, Winter 2017
48. What is the Perfect Camera For You?
49. What to Consider When Buying a Camera

Digital Medium Format Photography

• Why Digital Medium Format is a Game-Changer for Color Photography
• The Upsides and Downsides of Digital Medium Format Photography
• Fujifilm GFX 50R and 45mm f/2.8 Lens First-Impressions Review
• Review of the Pentax 645Z and Digital Medium Format Photography
• 7 Reasons Why I Love Digital Medium-Format Photography
• My Experience Shooting Digital Medium Format in Street Photography
• My Experience Shooting my Friend’s Wedding on Digital Medium Format
• Why Digital Medium Format is the Future of Photography
• Is Digital Medium Format Worth It?
• 7 Lessons I’ve Learned Shooting Fashion For the First time on Digital Medium Format (PENTAX 645Z)

Smartphone Photography >

• The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Smartphone Photography
• Benefits of Shooting Street Photography With a Smartphone
• In Street Photography, The Smaller the Camera, the Better

Film Photography 101 >

• Film Street Photography Manual
• What I Learned Shooting 100 Rolls of Black and White Film
• What I Learned Processing 164 Rolls of Film

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My favorite camera: RICOH GR III

Currently my favorite camera is the RICOH GR III:

• Why the RICOH GR III is the Best Travel Photography Camera
• Why the RICOH GR III is Better than the Leica Q2
• Why the RICOH GR III is the Best Street Photography Camera
• The RICOH GR III (3) is the Best Camera Ever Made.

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Best Equipment by ERIC KIM

This is a list of my personal favorite equipment in photography, computers, and life:

Of course, this list probably won’t apply to you — but this is advice I would give myself (if I needed to buy stuff):

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Film cameras

If you’re new to shooting film, pick up a copy of FILM NOTES.

Best film rangefinder

Leica MP + Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron Lens

Best affordable film rangefinder

Leica M6 + Voigtlander 35mm f/2.5 Lens

Best compact film camera

Contax T3

Best medium-format film camera

Hasselblad 500-series

Best black and white film

Kodak Tri-X 400 (pushed to 1600): $5

Best color film

Kodak Portra 400: $8.50

Best film scanner

For medium-format/35mm: Epson v800: $800

For 35mm: Plustek OpticFilm 8100: $270

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Camera accessories

Best camera shoulder bag

SAIGON SATCHEL

Best camera backpack

Fits 13” Laptop and Camera: Thinktank Perception 15 (black): $120

Best photography neck strap

• Henri Neck Strap
• ERIC KIM Neck Strap: (for RICOH GRII)

Best photography wrist strap

• Henri Wrist Strap

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Best photography inspiration website

MagnumPhotos.com

Best photography news blog

PetaPixel.com

Best photography software

Adobe Lightroom

Best video editing software

iMovie (free) or Final Cut Pro X ($300)

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Books

See all my free books.

Best educational photography book

Magnum Contact Sheets

Best black-and-white photography art book

“Exiles” by Josef Koudelka

Best color photography art book

“The Suffering of Light” by Alex Webb

Best photography handbook

Street Notes

Best philosophy book

On the Shortness of Life – Seneca ($8) // 10 Lessons Seneca Has Taught Me.

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Best digital tools

Best laptop

Maxed-out 13” MacBook Pro (Refurbished)

Best phone

The smallest iPhone available (currently iPhone Mini)

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Best Mac Apps

Best writing app

IA Writer (for writing)

Best screen recorder

Camtasia

Best image resizer

JPEGmini Pro

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Audio

Best earbuds

In-ear monitors

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Apparel

Best underwear

ExOfficio Men Boxer Brief (black): $26

Best T-shirt

Outlier NYC Merino Wool T-Shirt

Best socks

Outlier NYC Black Merino Wool Socks

Best pants

Merino Wool Leggings (black)

Best glasses

LINDBERG – Titanium

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Finance

Best bank

Chase

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Best entrepreneurial tools

Best blogging platform

WordPress.org + Genesis theme

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Best paid online services

Best cloud storage

Dropbox (Pro)

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Diet & Nutrition

Food

Intermittent fasting — with one big meal a day (only dinner)

Workout

Deadlifts (one rep max) + squats + dumbbell press + chin-ups + pushups

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Conclusion

Of course this is just a list of stuff that work for me. It probably won’t work for you.

But I got inspired to make this list– because it took me about 10 years to figure out the best equipment for me. And this works for me, and I hope it can help simplify your purchasing decisions (at least in photography and some other details).

I’ll continue to do articles and videos related to equipment– because I do believe (up to a certain degree) having the ‘right’ equipment in life makes life easier. But the problem is falling victim to GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) where we are buying stuff for the sake of it (has happened to me).

If you already have a bunch of equipment that works for you– stick with it. But if you need some help, I hope this list helped you.

Always,
Eric

Become the DIABLO

Great thoughts by Peter >

Some thoughts I want to expand on:

Justice

How to do it.

Dear friend, a thought on my mind; perhaps the best way to approach life is to consider our life goals, and also for us to become more critical and discerning on how to achieve those life goals.

For example, our creative life goals, and also, what we want to achieve in a single day, in a week, or our lifetimes.

1. Mastering your physiology

I just hit the legendary 975 pound atlas lift, powered by ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, and a realization for myself:

I have a passion and a lust for ever more.

For example, it seems at least for myself, the direction and path I desire is to always have higher numbers.

For example, when I consider my younger days when I was 16 years old, and I had my 1991 Sentra SE-R, 5 speed coupe, and the joy that I had was always changing the modifications and things on it, do you ever give it more horsepower, torque, improve performance, etc.

However, I was never interested in comparing my car with other people. In fact, I had deep pride in my car, and how unique it was. The Sentra SE-R, the B 13, a unique model built from 1991 to 1993, was practically unheard of, even when I was a teenager. Similar to performance to an old-school BMW M3, and superior performance to the Honda Civic SI, which was also very popular when I was a teenager.

It seems that nowadays, at least in cars and car culture, we are obsessed with having more horsepower, more performance points, etc. It seems that the traditional benchmark in holidays is to have the Tesla model S plaid, 1000+ horsepower etc. I think this is what drives us, both metaphorically and literally, for example the dodge hellcat, SRT, dodge challengers etc., everyone wants to have the mythical 1000+ horsepower. But a funnier life goal and path:

Maybe a better life goal is instead, to desire to lift 1000 pounds.

I am fairly certain that I should be able to atlas lift over 1000 pounds, within the next year or two. I find this to be an interesting pursuit, because the only things I require is courage and time. The courage to attempt it, and time.

Also, focus. I think focus is a critical part of the equation, as the criticality of focus is that before you attempt a certain lift, when you load up over 10 plates on the bar, you gotta focus. You must focus to channel all of your energy, guts, courage, chutzpah into that one single given moment.

Why? Several things. First and foremost, you must focus and hype yourself up in order to have the courage to even attempt it in the first place.

Second, you want to be successful. The courage necessary for the attempt is critical, but technically the desired outcome is to be successful. To succeed.

Truth be told I don’t really care for “failure“, that is not being successful. If I try a given day give it my all, even if I had supreme focus and I was not successful, it doesn’t bother me that much. I’ll just try again in a few days, in a week, and if I have a long enough runway, I know I will eventually be successful.

2. Time

The reason why I believe time to be a critical component is at least in the context of weightlifting, if you attempt a one rep max, consistently, at least once a week, every week, let’s say for 10 years straight, certainly you’ll get stronger in the long term.

Are having a more long-term vision towards the future is a good one. Why?

I’ll give you an example. This summer me Cindy and Seneca spent about a month and a half in Asia, about two weeks in Hadong South Korea, and about a month in Saigon Vietnam. Because I did not have my typical gym, I noticed that my strength went down a little bit, or at least my technique and familiarity went down a little bit. But ultimately in the long term vision of things, I was not really affected. Actually, within about a week of coming back, or two weeks of coming back, I’ve been able to hit greater personal records than I had before I left to Asia. For example my rack pull, before leaving I was able to do eight plates, 25, five, and a 2.5’er. But a few days ago, I was able to supersede that old personal record, by doing a plate and a 35, 845 pounds. Therefore, even though I was gone from the gym for about a month and a half, I was able to achieve a new personal record that was 5 pounds greater than I was before my trip.

Also my atlas lift. 970 pounds was my new personal record before my trip, and after my trip, I was a little bit concerned if I lost too much strength and chutzpah. But even though I am still jetlagged, and I am sure that my strength waned a bit, I’ll be able to hit a new personal record of 975 pounds. That is 5 pounds more than it was before!

Therefore my big suggestion life is this; maybe in terms of vision, it is good to think at the three month, six month, year, 1-3 year, five year, 10 year, 20-30 year spans.

For example, I remember after I graduated UCLA, and I was living in West LA, and there was a tiny Tesla showroom dealership in the area. This is when Tesla was still just the rebranded lotus car. This is one there was only a Tesla roadster. I think Tesla was already IPO’d public at the time.

I think the genius of Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc. is that their vision encapsulates very long periods of time.

For example, SpaceX. Or thinking about colonizing space and mars. Certainly we have to think at the decade, 20 year, 30 year, 40 year time span. To think short periods of time is not useful.

I think the reason why I enjoyed reading Invent and Wander by Jeff Bezos so much, which is just a collection of his shareholder letters is that it is clear that Jeff Bezos had at least a 30 year vision. For example with Amazon prime, it was seen as pure insanity. Now we just take it as an expected thing. Fortunately for myself, I still see Amazon prime as pure magic and phenomenal. The same thing goes with Uber, etc.

3. Photo time

A thought that I’ve been having recently, I love the gym, but in someways, going to the gym eats into my photography time. That is, time it takes me to review my photos, time it takes me to process my photos and upload them, or even time necessary for me to blog, write, send out email newsletters, do more website stuff, backend stuff, building websites, blogs, etc.

Time is a critical component. But the question is, how do we gain more time?

Technically you can’t gain more time in a given day, or even a single lifespan. Let us assume that the maximum possible human lifespan is 120 years, but more realistically it might be around 80 to 90 years. I personally aspire to live to 120 years old, but whether I will be successful or not is uncertain. Why? I don’t know if I will die traumatically in a car accident, if I catch some sort of random cancer or a disease, life is always uncertain. Therefore the consequence is in life, we must always be cautious, in terms of our time and our life.

The first thought I have is it is a good idea to be insanely discerning with your time in your life. That is, do not trade your time or your life for anything else what you do not consider important or critical to you. For example nowadays, the only thing I really care to do is my creative work, spend maximum time with Seneca, etc. Everything else doesn’t really matter to me anymore.

I think in life, focusing on innovation is a good one. Why? I believe the greatest boon to being American is our ethos of innovation.

4. Thinking beyond?

As humans, human beings, what is a good way to think about life in approach life?

I think a basic notion is to think beyond. Do you think beyond our small little bubble, or small town or city or county or state, or even our nation. It seems much more interesting to focus on the planet, the globe, etc.

I think one of the best things of traveling internationally is that it widens our perspective and worldview, that is, we can think bigger, more globally and beyond.

5. Mad max world

I think it is clear that climate, the world, weather temperature and other things are becoming weirder and weirder. My friend Seth calls this “global weirding”— the general idea is that certainly notions of “climate change“ and “global warming“ is too political and misleading. I think more robust concepts include pollution, and weird weather or climate patterns.

For example as I write these words, there is big news that this upcoming Monday or Tuesday there will be a massive hurricane in Southern California. I consider this very weird because currently they speak this, the sun is insanely bright and it’s close to 100° degrees Fahrenheit. That’s around 40°C.

I think currently we’re living in a Mad Max world. What I currently witness is this:

During the day, it is almost too bright, the sun is too strong to go outside in the direct sun. The only solutions include wearing a baseball cap, a wide brimmed hat, long pants and long sleeves, protect your skin.

For myself the heat doesn’t really bother me, but certainly if the UV radiation from the sun is too strong, you can’t really go outside.

I still prefer this insanely hot and bright and scorching sun weather over cold and damp and bone chilling, but still, the climate and the sun is brutal.

I was talking with some people, why California, why southern California, it seems that other states, the climate is not so good. For example Arizona Utah and Nevada, Las Vegas, Texas, Austin is almost too hot. Certainly the east coast has lots of great options, but for some reason people seem reticent to move to the East Coast.

Imagine living in the world in which the pollution and the sun and the climate is too unwelcoming outside. Then what do you do, just live in a mall for the rest of your life? Or live indoors for the rest of your life? Not desirable.

So my general takeaway point is given that climate, outdoors, the world outside everything is shitty, still make the best out of it!

6. Life philosophy?

It seems that the things which need to be beefed up is our thinking and our philosophy towards life, being alive, innovation and beyond. This will be the topic that we continue to work on.

Philosophy by KIM >

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Think better

The promise of ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE — think better.

Drink better, think better >

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New experiences to uplift you and take you beyond

If you’re hungry for a new embodied reality experience to take you beyond, some new workshops which might be interesting to you:

1. Master Street photography in Philly, this upcoming October 14
2. Discover the creative meaning of your life in downtown LA, this upcoming November 4th

Some new workshops I’m currently working on include a visual artist workshop, an introduction to stoicism workshop, etc. Stay updated on the workshops page or the newsletter.

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Now what?

Hugging Face — experiment with AI ART!

Stable diffusion, introduction

OPENAI.com

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EK COFFEE

The zenmobile?

Vid

I always want higher numbers!

Lean is the way:

Simple: intermittent fasting, no breakfast, no lunch, only one massive dinner a day. I’ve been doing this successfully for the last seven years.

Video

America is the best place to be:

I love it!

Attempt the insanely audacious:

Having to maintain a website, serious pain in the butt. During upgrades, migrations, changes to the server PHP etc., seems that something always breaks. This means long arduous phone calls with the service staff, trying to figure out how to fix it.

I suppose this is also the reason why I would hate having to maintain a home, or a house or property. Things always breaking. Also issues like the plumbing electricity, hot water heater etc.

Not only that, but it seems like the funny train nowadays is that people want to become a landlord, on property and rent it out, etc. To me this almost seems like a positively bad idea, the reason being is that tenants seem to be a pain in the butt to manage. For example, even if you have the worlds best tenants, eventually something in their home will break, and you have to deal with it and fix it. Or worst case scenario, do you have positively malicious tenants, and then they either intentionally or unintentionally break things in your home. Not worth the headache.

I am uncontrollable — why people disdain me?

I disobey direct orders, I just smile, nod and continue.

FUCK UP THE WORLD!

Physics don’t apply to me!

Never leave the states?

What is virtue? Courage. Therefore, courage training, virtue training is the same thing.

No audience, no other people, no interest?

For me, my heaven is other people?

Social capitalism

Perhaps for me, my only goal in life is in regards to social challenges? Not money? Not even capital?

4K ain’t worth it? Why? Too slow!!

1. Downloading times are too slow
2. Upload times are too slow
3. Processing into 4K time is too slow
4. Loading time is too slow!

What do we want from society anyways?

Now that I’ve stopped doing deadlifts, and do rack pulls instead, looking at somebody do deadlifts with perfect form, I’m starting to think that from my objective perspective, deadlifts look a bit silly. Same thing goes with benchpress.

The size of your muscles has nothing to do with the size of your courage

Hardwork and virtue has nothing to do with one other. Rather it all comes down to courage.

“Then off your fucking head!”

One of the good things about playgrounds is that it is almost like an outdoor gym for kids. Conversely, I think there needs to be more outdoor gyms built for adults.

Currently speaking the best example that I have personally discovered is the golds gym Venice Beach location which has an ample outdoor area.

A cheap where you could do this is just rent some sort of cheap ass open parking lot.

For example, if you see somebody doing dangerous things on the road, honk hard at them, to educate them not to do so.

Left

How NOT to waste time?

How to become more artistic

POWER YOUR POTENTIAL: https://erickimphotography.com/blog/product/eric-kim-omakase-coffee/

“Name one genius that ain’t crazy!” – YE

The infinite benefits of ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE

Like the robe of Joseph!