Hi friends,

I want to share the greatest personal breakthrough I reached today and how you can apply this to reach your full potential past your wildest dreams.
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Dear friend,

I wanted to write you an essay about social media. Is social media a wall that is dividing us, or bringing us closer together? It is a curious question that has gnawed at the back of my mind from age 21 until now (age 30).

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Dear friend,

A thought–

Think of yourself like hydra. You cut off one neck; and three will sprout out from that stump!

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HAPTIC hand makes limited edition creative tools. Here is an inventory update of our most popular HAPTIC tools soon to be sold out (ships worldwide from California). Pick one up before it’s too late! Thank you for the love over the years! <3 Cindy & Eric

• SUITS by Eric Kim Limited First Edition Hardcover Photobook [8 left] Invest in Eric Kim’s first photobook creation. Almost sold out!
• SAIGON SATCHEL [7 left] Your artistic on the go camera bag.
• MY FIRST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK Children’s Hardcover Book  [10 left] Inspire your kids and next generation to take photos! Perfect gift for all ages
• HENRI SHOULDER STRAP  [18 left] The perfect cross-b0dy camera leather strap.
• ERIC KIM CASE [13 left] Carry your Ricoh, film, SD cards, and all your camera accessories
• HAPTIC NOTEBOOK x ERIC KIM [2 left] Your handmade paper and photography poetry notebook.
• ERIC KIM PORTFOLIO BAG [4 left] For the photographer artist, fits the iPad and  exclusively available in HAPTIC shop.

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Dear friend,

We are currently undergoing a phenomenally exciting time in photography– the marriage of (human) photographers and AI (artificial intelligence):

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Some simple photo composition tips:

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Dear friend,

A very simple yet powerful idea:

Dictate your own purpose in life.

There ain’t a “right” or “wrong” purpose in life. It is your duty in life to dictate your own purpose in life.

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Dear friend,

Simple idea:

If you want to be a better photographer, be a happier person!

In simple words:

First seek to be happier in your life (via studying philosophy and taking more real-life risks), and secondly — just going out more to take pictures!

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Dear friend,

I wanted to pen a quick essay on some personal thoughts on freedom, free will, and how you have (more) power than you think!

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Dear friend,

I remember when I was a kid– really into modding computers. There was this concept of ‘over-clocking’– you would push your computer processor to run faster than the ‘stable’ specifications. For example, if I bought an AMD processor that ran 2ghz, I could go into the BIOS and push it to 2.2 ghz, or if you got better cooling equipment in your computer (additional fans, better heatsink, cooling, etc) — you could actually push this processor even further to 2.5ghz or more!

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Dear friend,

A simple question:

Who do you desire to become in life?

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With photography, we become super-human with our vision.

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A fun idea for your photography:

For a month, experiment just shooting only JPEG (no post-processing) — and see if this helps librate you in photography!

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Dear friend,

A simple idea: Whenever you click the shutter, you’re just taking an attempt.

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You are great
Dont seek to placate the masses or the herd
Seek your own personal apotheosis; give yourself your own self-hyping hypnosis

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We have all heard the saying, ‘Fortune favors the brave.’ I like the saying, but it ain’t accurate or specific enough for me:

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I’m pretty excited for the new VENOM movie, and started to do a little philosophical musings on the concepts of:

• Symbiotic relationships
• Parasitic relationships

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Dear friend,

I have been studying a lot of algorithms, AI, etc — and came across this concept of ‘naive’. For example in machine learning, there is a concept of ‘naive bayes‘. Now how can a concept in machine learning be ‘naive’ (like a un-wise and silly human being)?

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I’m an Elon Musk fanboy until I die. Here are some practical lessons I learned from him, from his recent interview with Joe Rogan:

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Disrupt normal, be unique
Be you and smile, cheek to cheek

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Dear friend,

A simple and funny idea:

Why have a brain?

In simple words: why have humans evolved to have a brain? And what is the best way we can use our brain?

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Dear friend,

A practical idea: In order to become the most epic you, play against yourself!

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Steve Jobs: one of my heroes. He has taught me the importance of staying true (and stubborn) on your creative vision, the importance of combining the liberal arts and engineering, and the importance of following your own gut and intuition.

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To live a better life, embrace the extremes. Avoid the boring middle– either relax 100%, or go hard 100%. “Sleep hard, or work hard”. In this essay, I will try to combine personal thoughts on living, photography, working out, health, and diet (with this embracing the extremes strategy):

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Dear friend,

A practical idea I have for you:

Treat your photography like a blank slate (tabula rasa). When you start off in photography, be totally ignorant of the outside world, and learn on your own (don’t enroll into photography or art school). Then use this chance to build your own unique vision, and as you get more experienced, THEN learn some theory and outside concepts and ideas to challenge your pre-existing ideas, then decide through dialectics (testing two contrary opinions) what best works for you.

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My buddy Nassim Taleb posited a question in his book, ‘Antifragile’ that regarded ‘post-traumatic growth’. I think I’m one of the lucky few who was actually made stronger because of trauma– not weakened. I want to use this essay as a chance to share why I think I was able to grow from trauma, and some practical ideas on how we can help our future children thrive from stress and trauma.

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Wipe the slate clean
What new ideas can you glean?

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Dear friend,

A basic idea: the future of photography is going to be editing (the art of selecting your best work, and not showing your weak work).

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Set the bar higher, high-flyer
Don’t mind if you don’t reach the top— just keep hustling hard, and don’t you stop

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Check out the Stanford ‘Image Painting‘ demo to see how AI and deep learning can re-construct your photos; helping you better judge your own picture compositions!

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Dear friend,

I’m studying a lot of AI, and have been philosophizing (my entire life) about technology-human integration.

A realization today:

We are seeking to ‘augment our intelligence’ with technology, yet what I think we really want to do is to augment our wisdom!

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Authentic
Whatever life has given you, you’ve been blessed with

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What if we lived a life without fear and anxiety — how much more of our potential could we reach?

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To live a more epic life — go hard, and supersede (your self-perceived) limits

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Dear friend,

Simple question:

What is your dream in life, and what are you willing to sacrifice in order to achieve it?

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Dear friend,

Some practical ideas on realizing your potential (recognition of your talents), as well as having the strength to turn these skills into reality!

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Should we augment reality?

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Dear friend,

A lot of us want to be “motivated” (Latin means, ‘to move’). Some of us are self-motivated, and some of us lack motivation (the energy necessary to work, or act).

In this essay, I want to share some practical ideas on how you can self-motivate yourself.

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Dear friend,

Do you remember when you were a kid, and you had to deal with ‘lag’? To me, lag (or latency) is one of the worst things as a gamer. But how can we use this analogy of ‘LAG’ in real life?

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Dear friend,

Something I realized– it ain’t enough just to shoot nice compositions of things. More importantly, we need to know how to recognize potentially interesting scenes BEFORE we shoot them. Or in more simple words,

“How do we know if a scene is interesting enough to photograph in the first place?”

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Dear friend,

I think I am currently one of the most productive bloggers on the internet (and the world). I want to share how I do it– and perhaps a little on why I do it.

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“I’m an alien.” – Elon Musk

Dear friend,

Philosophical question — why do so many of us want to be ‘normal’? Wouldn’t it be more fun and interesting to NOT be normal? Wouldn’t it be better to be a mis-fit than a “square”? Wouldn’t it be better to be an alien than a “normal” human?

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Dear friend,

I got a question I want to work out with you: what is visual intelligence, and what does it teach us about being human?

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To impress… literally means to IMPRESS (leave an indentation) upon someone else. I think what we are trying to do as photographers is to impress our viewers. Not necessarily to “show off”– but we are trying to make an impact on our viewers. Therefore it is essential for us to impress our viewers with our photos. But how do impress others with our pictures, and make a meaningful impact on our viewers? Some simple ideas:

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I just watched the 2006 Werner Herzog documentary on the origins of the internet (“Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World“) and found this concept of a “log” interesting– specifically the concept of an “internet log” — nowadays we say “vlog” (video log) or “blog” (weB + log). And what are we as photographers in today’s world? PLOGGERS (photo-loggers); we use photographs to log and record our lives.

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Dear friend,

A philosophical epiphany I had:

We need friction in life in order to do or accomplish anything.

Why is this? Let me explain.

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Dear friend,

What is the future of photography? My opinion: image-selection, editing (choosing your best pictures), and curating your portfolio of your best pictures you care about.

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I love shooting JPEG. Why? It simplifies my photographic workflow and life.

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My buddy Josh White is doing an artist talk at Leica Korea this Saturday, September 15th, 2018th. Don’t miss your chance to meet Josh, ask him questions about photography, and get inspired!

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Make elegant pictures
Create your own visual scale; break it off the Richter

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Dear friend,

In today’s modern world with AI, smartphone cameras, and automated cameras– what is the function of the photographer?

Why take pictures? To me, photography is visual poetry.

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Dear friend,

A practical life philosophy: live in a straight line.

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Dear friend,

For us to become better visual artists, we must undergo ‘visual training’.

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As photographers, we make pictures and photographs of reality. But a difficult question to answer is:

Why make images?

And also, why are images important to society?

Let’s reflect.

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Dear friend,

Something I’m curious about — what would a “post-like” society look like?

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First of all, let us play with the Google Vision API and test it out:

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Dear friend, consider this your visual gym — strengthen your visual muscles:

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Just tested out the new iPhone 8 camera, and I’m super impressed. All photos are straight out of camera, with no processing. Some personal thoughts:

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Dear friend,

I’ve been philosophizing a lot about AI and studying AI (especially AlphaGo– just watched the Netflix documentary and was super inspired). Anyways, the question I have is this:

What can AI teach us about being human, or how can we better leverage AI to help us become smarter, more intelligent, or “better”?

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Dear friend,

A basic idea: why make better compositions in your photography?

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Dear friend,

Simple question: what is your end-game in life?

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The biggest problem in photography now: we have TOO MANY photos to look through. We are overwhelmed with our pictures, and we have no idea which of our photos are the best — and we’re uncertain which photos we should share/publish.

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Dear friend,

A lot of folks are afraid of AI (artificial intelligence), and the effect of technology on our everyday lives. My suggestion: turn yourself into a centaur; half-man, half-machine.

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Style: the impression you stick on your viewer.

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Made on iPad Pro 10.5 inch. Studying the work of Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance painters:

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To me, the best use of our human metabolism is to create art!

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Basic idea: as a photographer, if you’re shooting street photography (or photographing anything that is moving), you are tracking the movement of the subject. The movement of the subject moving towards you, away from you, or in different directions. But how can we apply this machine learning concept of ‘image tracking’ to our photography? Some ideas:

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Dali is the original surrealist:

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Tip: Use the VSCO “distoria” filter to check whether your composition is good or not:

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Dear friend,

I want to make the case why you might want to become an entrepreneur.

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