ERIC KIM ₿

Leave others alone; tolerate their behavior and way of living!

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To discover more motivation in life, FIRST MOVE, then get inspired.

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Don’t become a prisoner of a single genre!

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Perhaps in order to maximize your altruism, you must also maximize your selfishness:

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To strive to MAX OUT everyday.

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Don’t strive to live a painless life. Instead, strive to seek the GOOD PAIN — pain which shows and signals that you’re growing!

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“You was who you was before you got here.” – JAY Z

What is your goal and mission in life?

To become MORE of yourself.

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Striving for perfect is bad.

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Why is Tesla so great? Because all the other car companies are so basic, boring, and the same.

Which makes me wonder —

With life, entrepreneurship, and any pursuits in life — isn’t it better to aim for the insanely epic and audacious, instead of settling for the boring and basic?

For example:

1. With life, work, career, your future — better to pursue your passion with insane zeal than to choose the boring and “safe” path in life. In other words, ignore your parents and pursue and pave your own path in life.
2. Better to fail big than to succeed in a petty endeavor. In other words, shoot for insanely huge goals, and don’t worry too much if you succeed or fail. The striving towards these epic goals is the joy in itself.
3. Memento mori: Considering your life is short, avoid the basic and boring in life!

I’ve been on a roll shooting a lot lately! Some ideas which has inspired and motivated me:

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In praise of extreme selfishness for “the greater good” of humanity:

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Why do I live? Why do I wakeup everyday?

What pushes me? What drives me? Why do I do what I do, and why am I so excited to (continue) living?

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Theory — the origin of productivity is from the body, muscles, and the desire to manifest, express, gather, share, and produce more (bodily) power.

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You don’t need permission from anyone to call yourself a photographer. If your passion is to make images, assert yourself as a photographer!

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Lifting weights is boring when the weight is too light. Lifting weights is only fun when it is challenging, difficult, but still “achievable”.

A thought:

Is the best life in which you are seeking the MOST DIFFICULT and hard challenges, and striving with all your might to overcome those challenges?

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To be happier, do more of of what you love and care for:

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Our desire to impact more is the driving human force we have to keep on living!

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What do we really want?

We want to maximize our individual ability to impact, change, and affect others and the world.

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If you want to make an epic impact in the world, make a blog and start blogging!

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Life— in order to achieve epic things, these epic things will require epic effort, which will probably be accompanied by epic pain. Consider the joy of life, but the epic pain of childbirth. Perhaps an artist who makes art works should also experience a similar pain of childbirth?

Not pain for the sake of pain. But pain is perhaps a signal, or a stimulant towards growth? Or pain as a signal that you’re pushing yourself to the limit, and perhaps BEYOND and ABOVE your limit? Is this how growth works?

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Before you die, think about this—

Not what you’ve bought or purchased in your life, but what you’re accomplished.

The trillion dollar question:

How should we live our lives? What is the best life?

Let me share some honest thoughts:

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It seems all of us want more energy to do more stuff.

But what does this really mean? What is ‘energy’ from a physiological human-metabolism perspective? What does it mean to have “more energy”, and can we augment our human energy?

And even if we have more energy — towards which ends do we desire to channel this energy into?

Let me essay some of my thoughts:

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When should we ask for feedback? When shouldn’t we ask for feedback?

Why do we ask for feedback, towards what end?

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The hunger and the overwhelming desire to see manifest in the world what you desire to see manifested in the world!

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My critique of Google: how sneaky it feels. How it desires to “nudge” you in a certain way; seeming like some friend, but actually an insanely addictive algorithm which gives you exactly what you want (like a rat and pez dispenser of cocaine). Not only that, but Google as an unaesthetic advertising platform.

Of course Google has benefitted humanity 1000x more than it has hurt it, yet my simple suggestion:

Subtract things from your life that you don’t like from technology or Google.

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Your life is short and uncertain. The question is:

What do I consider my supreme life task — a life task I consider worthy of myself?

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One of my favorite films is the movie 300, based on the graphic comic novel (300) by Frank Miller.

Reading the comic and studying the compositions, I am BLOWN AWAY! I am so inspired. Let me share some thoughts:

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Why I cannot bear to see a decline in myself:

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How I’m so creatively productive:

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A funny essay I wanted to write— detailing my philosophy behind why I eat what I eat, and towards what ends.

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“You was who you was before you got here.” – JAY Z

The basic notion is this: you don’t strive to become someone else. You strive to become purely yourself.

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An ambitious goal inspired by Horace:

Striving to make photos more enduring and lasting than bronze!

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Something I was very curious when I started photography:

Could I turn my passion of photography into a living?

Truth be told, when I was in college I didn’t think it would be possible. Thus I started this blog for fun, and to just share my thoughts. But nearly a decade+ later, I’ve made racks from photography, and I’m essentially retired at age 32. And because I’m so frugal, I will never run out of money.

I wanted to write this essay to give you some practical ideas, to empower you, and hopefully help you make some gouda from photography:

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No aim towards finality or a final destination. Instead, strive to ENJOY the process of “becoming” — becoming MORE!

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How do you self-identify yourself? If you share your photos online, you’re a photography entrepreneur.

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How do you know what you should create or make? Simple:

Create for yourself.

Meaning — think of yourself as your own ideal consumer of your own creations.

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Nowadays there is too much focus and faith on metaphysics (things beyond the physical world, notions like “good” and “evil) and almost no focus on the physical.

Why so much obsession with metaphysics? My thought: we humans all want to become superhuman, or mini-god-deities. We want to transcend the physical realm — we don’t like feeling constrained or held back by the physical!

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Something I haven’t seen philosophers (besides Nietzsche) talk about: the philosophy of physiology. Let me make an attempt to construct my personal philosophers about physiology:

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How to optimize and maximize your creative power:

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Allow me to re-introduce myself. My name is ERIC KIM and I have devoted my life to photography.

Why? Let me share:

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I am convinced: street photography is the supreme form of photography.

Also — photography as the most interesting and noble form of art-creation for us visual-artists/streettogs:

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On creative muscularity:

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What is the purpose of life? There isn’t an ‘ultimate’ purpose of life that applies to everyone. But for us brave streettogs, this is my thought:

The purpose of our lives is to devote ourselves to photography.

Our goal:

Use our entire lives, our entire power to make great photos, share great photos, innovate photography, discover new compositions, and push the genre and culture of photography forward!

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The other day I was using Adobe Lightroom, and for some reason, got kicked out. I forgot my login id/password, and thought:

Damn it, I don’t want to go through the bother of recovering my ID/password, etc.

I then thought:

Hmmm — if Adobe has these kind of annoying lock-out things, perhaps it is best to NOT use it at all, and discover some sort of alternative.

Thus, I tried using Apple Photos instead. And honestly, I think I prefer Apple Photos over Adobe Lightroom. Why? Let me explain:

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All of life and all of photography is good:

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Why do we love free? Free as in price, or free in terms of freedom? Or both?

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The beauty of life : the impermenance and ephemeral nature.

For example, realize any consumer good you buy won’t and shouldn’t be forever. I always got suckered with trying to buy the perfect device: the perfect camera, phone, laptop, tablet, etc. But it seems the more realistic goal: just buy stuff expecting you to not own it for so long. Also realize anything we buy, we will eventually get bored of it. Thus we should still aim to buy things which will be more robust to time, but nothing will be robust forever.

The new aesthetic and fashion of the future: austere luxury.

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Towards a person-first approach, or a human-centric approach.

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A new collection of some of my favorite photos:

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Thoughts on Identity

There is a lot of talk about identity and ‘identity politics’. But I wonder — why do we care so much for identity? And is identity overrated?

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Art is long, life is short (ars longa, vita brevis).

Our human biological lifespan is limited. At best we can live to be 120-140 years old. But what do we desire? Perhaps to EXCEED the tyranny and confines of our singular human lives, and aim for some sort of immortality through our art, ideas, and offspring.

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The principle of life:

I ain’t gonna stop! I’m moving too fast!

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It seems most of us are dissatisfied with where we are right now, and would prefer to be somewhere else.

For example, we often get the feeling that “the grass is greener on the other side”. But what if your grass were supreme? What if the grass is greener on YOUR side? What if the optimal strategy in life were to stay put, and to maximize your own garden — right where you are living and standing?

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When I look at my old photos, I almost feel as if I re-experience the experience again like it were my first time!

What should you dedicate and devote your life to?

A thought:

Perhaps we can devote our lives to photography — to explore the depths of photograph, aesthetics of beauty, secrets of motivation and inspiration, and the great will to live and photograph.

We shall become the new photographer-artist-philosophers of the future par excellence!

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Something I realized —

Cities which are more chaotic are more interesting and fun to photograph.

For example the joy of naming photos in Hanoi, NYC, or Tokyo. The chaos wakes us up!

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No matter how “boring” or ordinary your life, just shoot it!

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What’s the purpose of color? My thought: color as a strong visual stimulus which puts more energy, vigor, and movement to your legs and body!

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I hate notions of limits. Even with my blog, website, and server — I got a hard upper-limit of 1 million files. But what if I want to upload 10million files? Or 100 million? Or 1 billion photos?

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Each photo is another molecule of water in the stream:

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It ain’t about good or bad photos — it is about sincere or insincere photos.

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To look at old photos is almost akin to shooting them anew!

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There is the common saying in academia “publish or perish”. This is often seen in a negative light.

But what if we flipped the notion upside down, and thought that publishing IS PLEASURE?

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Why do you love photography is the question we must always ask ourselves and ask others:

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One of the most important things in photography — the art of selecting your photos.

My current fun workflow:

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New composition studies from some of my photos:

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I have been a cold shower devotee for the last 6 years or so, and it’s probably one of the best “life hacks” I know.

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