ERIC KIM ₿

The soul of the photographer: the essence of the photographer. How the photographer sees the world (their perspective), their aesthetic and ethical choices, their subject matter, and their personal philosophy.

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A thought:

Perhaps composition is all about ratios, proportions, relativity.

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Why does it matter if they’re natural or not?

Just watched ICARUS documentary (loved it), and have been thinking a lot about drugs, steroids, performance enhancing drugs, etc— and have been thinking about notions of:

1. “Natural” vs “unnatural”
2. “Fairness” vs “unfairness”
3. Playing “clean” vs playing “dirty”
4. Effort vs Generics
5. Privilege vs Unprivileged

The question is:

Why do these matter? Should they matter?

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A simple idea:

To become more focused and productive, uninstall one app from your phone everyday.

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Getting my Ansel Adams on:

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Practical travel tips:

1. All black merino wool clothing. If cold, wear two black merino tshirts on top of one another (thanks to my friend Takashi for the tip). Two black merino t shirts, two black exofficio boxers, two pairs of black Outlier.NYC socks, one pair of black merino leggings, one pair of black Uniqlo stretchy black jeans (EZY).
2. Don’t travel with laptop: Just bring your phone and/or iPad. I discovered I can do 90% of the things on my iPad Pro as I can do with my MacBook Pro laptop.
3. To save money on food while traveling, eat street food, go to the local market and buy a rotisserie chicken, or get the hot foods by the pound at Whole Foods ($9 a pound for food— great deal!) The organic rotisserie chicken at Whole Foods ($10) is also a great deal for meat (2 pounds). Good for my intermittent fasting and ketogenic diet.
4. Good to stay at a hotel with a gym. If not go to the local parks while traveling and do chin-ups, dips, squats, lunges, and pushups.
5. When walking and wandering, take the spirit of the flaneur. This means walk slowly, aimlessly, with no real destination in mind.

The future of street photography is extremely bright!

Consider:

More and more people are moving into cities, and more and more people are shooting with their iPhones and smartphones.

Which means street photography (will eventually) become the dominant form and genre of photography.

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Everything you need to know to get started in street photography (and to eventually master it)!

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Via negativa wisdom and focus (Taleb/Nietzsche):

Decide what to consciously become ignorant of in order to focus on what you deem as truly great and worthy of yourself.

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A thought:

Perhaps we are thinking the whole motivated thing incorrectly.

For example, let’s say I want to photograph and make photos. Instead of needing motivation to go out and shoot, perhaps the correct answer is to first go out and shoot, then discover the motivation while shooting.

Or in exercise, you don’t need motivation to exercise. You go exercise first, and then you will feel the motivation as an accompaniment while you’re exercising.

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Practical tips and ideas:

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Would you rather be a tame (and obedient, domesticated) animal (sheep), or would you rather be an apex predator (lion, eagle)?

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If your desire is to always be making new photos, don’t be afraid to punish, bang around, scratch, or damage your camera. Treat the dings, scratches, and war marks as a sign of pride! Beauty of use, patina, and “breaking it in”!

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An idea: as you get richer, lower your standard of living?

For example: as I’ve become richer, I’m less dazzled by the hype of expensive stuff. I think I can gauge my own sincerity more truly now:

I prefer “bang for the buck” value over how fancy something is.

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Theory:

To become more artistically and mentally fit, first focus on becoming physically fit.

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Freedom is to have no boundaries, no limits— nothing which can constrain or hold us back.

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Often when it comes to design, cars, luxury goods, watches, etc — why is it that we prefer the foreign (Italian, French, Japanese)— and not local or domestic?

Is it perhaps a dissatisfaction with our own culture and locality — or is there some human desire towards the foreign?

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What makes good art? Artwork which augments your feeling of power, and uplifts and elevates your spirit!

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To blog is to stream your thoughts, your soul, your ideas, and your art.

The goal isn’t to go viral, or make a perfect blog post; the goal is to never stop streaming you.

This means:

1. Don’t self censor yourself when blogging. Write about whatever is on your mind. Don’t stick to a certain subject or genre.
2. Think longevity: how can you blog for 10 years straight, everyday, several times a day without boredom or exhaustion?

This has been my personal street photography entrepreneurship philosophy which has helped me succeed:

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I made some new High Contrast Lightroom CC (Creative Cloud) presets: this time high-contrast to be applied to my RICOH GR III (high contrast JPEG photos) in order to add even more contrast.

These should work quite well for JPEG monochrome images. I have yet test them on RAW images, but check them out and play with them, remix them, and give them a go:

You can see all my Lightroom Presets Here >

It seems as a society we are striving towards “regularity”, “homeostasis”, predictability, and normality.

Are these virtues that we truly desire for ourselves; or are they beneath us?

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When we want ‘happiness’ — what is it exactly that we want?

My theory:

The best happiness is physiological happiness.

What is ‘physiological happiness’? Let me explain:

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To be “economical” means to “wisely allocate your resources”. These resources include your time, life, energy, money, manpower, etc.

Why is having the ability to wisely allocate your resources important?

Because:

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A thought:

What are our limits?

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I can speak for you, but this is how I like to live my life:

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For us to make leaps and bounds in our photography and philosophy, don’t waste your energies on morals and ethics.

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After thinking a long time for a good definition for “virtue”, I think I got a good one:

Human greatness and magnanimity.

Generally we will call it “manliness” (but I want to take the notion further which also applies to women).

Why virtue? Let me explain:

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Something which interests me:

What motivates us to photograph?

Meaning:

1. What is the initial impulse which motivates us to photograph something?
2. Are there more optimal conditions to photograph?
3. How do we determine what (or what not) to photograph?
4. How do we determine how many photos of a certain scene to photograph?
5. Why photograph?

Practical thoughts:

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What I truly desire in my life:

1. Get stronger (physically): Desire to increase my “one rep max” in all my lifts.
2. Getting more muscular: Continue to build my muscle mass while keeping my body fat percentage under 10%.
3. Making great products which inspire, motivate, and empower artists, creators, and photographers (HAPTIC INDUSTRIES).
4. Never running out of motivation and inspiration to make new art.
5. Discover new levels and depths of truth (philosophical “truthiness”).
6. Living to 120-140 years old with “hyper health”.

What’s interesting about these things: they are 100% dependent on myself. Perhaps this are the best life goals to have? To battle with physics, time, and effort/willpower instead of public opinion.

As photographers, what are we truly lacking, and what do we really need and desire?

My thought:

We are lacking the strength, motivation, or the wisdom to encourage ourselves to go out and shoot new photos, with extreme joy and delight.

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So this is interesting to me:

Society scorns us when we have ‘weak willpower’. When we don’t have strong enough willpower to resist temptations, eating junk food, etc.

We are taught, “If you train yourself to have enough willpower, you can do, prevent, and achieve anything!”

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To re-spark your passion for art and photography, focus on your body and physiology.

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There is no ultimate truth, right or wrong.

Thus your task:

Assert your own personal truth and opinions.

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Calligraphy (Zen Brush 2 app on iPad) has transformed my visual artistic life. Now I have another mode of artistic self expression and creation. I can BOTH make photos AND make calligraphs from my mind.

I encourage all photographers and visual artists to experiment with calligraphy — a whole brave new world awaits you!

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A realization:

We must think deeply on what we desire to become, in terms of our character, our personality, our body, and our mind.

More focus on self development of our body and mind, less concern for externals.

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Pure beauty is perhaps in the chaotic, random, and uneven:

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Ideas to make new street photos with more force, energy, and dynamism.

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One of the newest products cooking up in HAPTIC:

To be the first to be informed when this hyper-limited edition will be released, register intent by sending an email to hapticindustries@gmail.com

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First sent to ERIC KIM NEWSLETTER:

Dear streettogs,

Hope you’re doing well! I just wanted to send you a quick email, with some quick turbo thoughts on how to re-spark your passion for photography. Practical tips to get you going in your photography again! Here are the basic ideas:

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When you design things, you impute your personal aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy into your designs:

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The best life is the self-centered life.

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A thought:

Don’t worry too much about how “good” you are as a photographer (comparing yourself to others). Instead, just focus on making your own photos.

Less interest in the photos of others (even of the great master photographers). Ultimately your focus as a photographer is to make your own images, NOT to become anyone else.

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Trust physique more than “health”: (more…)

As a photographer you’re a visual experimenter. Your camera is the visual hammer — hammering out, and sculpting reality to your own desires!

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A thought:

Many of us desire fancy things like fancy sports cars, fancy clothes, fancy homes, fancy watches, accessories, cameras, devices, etc.

But what if instead of desiring these objects (totems of power), we instead decided to turn our own bodies into the things desired?

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A thought:

We must think in terms of possibility (physics, first principles) not probability (being “realistic”).

Anyone can live a basic, comfortable, and mediocre life by simply following orders, being industrious, and listening to the rules. But if it is your ambition for a new type of elevation in life, you must think in terms of what’s possible (governed by the law of physics).

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What does it mean to become BEYOND healthy?

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Make yourself:

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Never stop making new photos:

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I think “skill”in photography is a bit overrated. More fun and interesting to keep going out to shoot, experimenting, and letting randomness, chance, and chaos work in your favor!

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I’ve religiously been intermittent fasting the last 2+ years (no breakfast and lunch, only dinner) with great success. A new level of energy, focus, and strength has been unlocked within myself.

Also a new discovery:

I’m actually stronger when powerlifting and in a fasted state.

Why is this so? My theory:

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It ain’t a matter of being a “good” or “bad” photographer; it’s a matter of having fun in photography!

Some practical tips to help motivate you in your photography:

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When studying the etymology for the word “beautiful”, it essentially means “good”.

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An essay about morals and ethics in street photography. Essentially my point is this:

To think too much about morals and ethics in street photography is counter-productive.

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Indefinite (slow, steady) growth is pure joy:

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Inspiration after looking at the “skateboard” skeleton frame of Tesla:

The beauty of emptiness and negative space.

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After grappling a long time with philosophy, I’ve discovered that art and philosophy is perhaps the supreme fields of study. Furthermore for us to not worry about living a “moral” or “ethical” life, but an artistic life.

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Something fun I’ve been doing:

Select monochrome photos I like then turn them into abstract illustration-images.

What is the benefit of this?

1. I discover the compositional and visual “gist” of an image.
2. Fun activity to keep my eyes and visual senses sharp.
3. Deeper understanding of my images.

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Something I’ve realized about photos, art, images, and design:

What is most important is the dynamic energy the image sparks!

My current muses:

1. Car design
2. Animal design (sharks, Eagles, leopards, and other apex predators).

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Why be “healthy”? What does that even mean? How do you measure “health”?

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Perhaps this should be our adage as photographers:

Shoot it or lose it.

This means that our fitness as photographers relies on us shooting on a daily basis. Like exercising on a daily basis, or eating on a daily basis, being creative and artistic on a daily basis.

Like good Aristotle said — we perfect ourself and skills through our habits. So if we make shooting new photos (all day, everyday) our habit, certainly we can reach perfection in our photography!

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Shoot in black and white, select a photo you like, apply extreme contrast (curves), inverse the image, Gaussian blur it, inverse it some more, then fill in and paint in the image:

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I move, I groove to my own tune
I’m the first mover, the air cleaver, the movement needer.

I love to dance. I’ve light feet. Protein heavy, fed with meat.

Smile and greet, soft bed sheets. Tidy and neat, yet chaotic and heavy.

Steady with my artistic production, steadfast and strong.

Life is short, art is long!

ERIC

POETRY >

To better understand growth, biology, life, composition, and energy — perhaps we should study fractals, science, math, and physics.

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Something to think about when it comes to aesthetics:

Does it weaken you or strengthen you?

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You’re the best advantage in your life, not your phone.

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If we think that happiness (eudaimonia according to Aristotle) is legitimate (happiness as human thriving), perhaps our happiness as photographer-artists is “photographic thriving”.

This means:

1. Extreme optimism, joy, and fun in making new photos
2. Deep appreciation for your past photos
3. Deep joy in all parts of the photographic process (walking, shooting, selecting, processing, and sharing your photos).

So the practical question:

How do we thrive as photographers?

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More impressive saving money… or more impressive getting more bang for the buck.

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