Stories by ERICKIM on Medium

Becoming Antifragile

ERICKIM — Wed, 24 May 2023 20:00:37 GMT

Probably the best modern-day book I’ve read in the last 10 years is Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. The basic gist is this;

When things threaten to destroy you, how can it be used as fuel to make you stronger?

In case you missed it

No fear.

What does it mean?

Essentially the basic idea is that in life, painful, bad, even violent aggressions from others are not to be avoided, but rather, maybe even desired.

For example, if somebody ask for interacts with you in an aggressive, negative way, consider it as a good thing; after the incident, you have become more robust, stronger, and more impervious to outside aggressions.

Let me give you example. About a week or two ago at the gym, I was doing my typical atlas lift and a random guy asked me, how much longer I was going to be. Realistically it might’ve been 20 minutes, but I didn’t want to rush myself so I added some buffer. I told him, around 40 minutes. As a result, he started cussing and cursing and saying that what I was doing was “fucking ridiculous.” Fortunately because I was having a good adrenaline rush from doing my lifts, about five minutes later I calmly approached him and asked if he wanted to working with me. He shook his head, and said he wasn’t interested.

Moral of the story: that incident in which somebody acted bad manners towards me, I actually responded with very good manners. As a consequence, I no longer fear any negative interactions at the gym. If anything, I am quite proud of how magnanimously I was able to respond to such a petty encounter.

Stoicism is the way

Stoicism isn’t a perfect technique, but it is certainly useful. I think in the context of manliness, and becoming a “real man”, I think stoicism is one of the best ways to become stronger.

There are lots of different stoic techniques and stoic tips.

Essentially, the basic gist:

When in doubt, delay reaction.

I suppose I am pretty dedicated to Stoicism, after all, I did name my first son after Seneca.

Becoming more invincible to fate

The new topics and directions is combining stoicism, street photography, and entrepreneurship to life:

June 17th, Saturday, 2023: DOWNTOWN LA CONQUER YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY AND LIFE
July 15–16th: ERIC KIM SAIGON VIETNAM TRAVEL STREET PHOTOGRAPHY EXPERIENCE 2023
Oct 14th (Saturday) PHILLY CONQUER STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Essentially, I believe that street photography is the supreme form of photography, as it requires the most courage and guts.

One rep maxing

Another way to become more anti-fragile or essentially to become stronger is through the one rep max school of weightlifting. The basic notion is this:

What is the maximum weight, you can lift successfully, once, even moving the barbell half an inch?

Note —

One rep max atlas lift: 925 pounds
One rep max rack pull: 810 pounds
One rep max floor benchpress: 595 pounds

ERIC KIM POWERLIFTING 2.0

Antifragile emotions

This is another big thing. It seems nowadays, everyone is too hyper sensitive. This means,

Do not say, do, or interact with me in such a manner that there is even a .001% chance I might take it the wrong way.

For example, it seems that in modern-day times, it is not permissible to talk to strangers, to make small chat, to approach strangers, to joke, offend people, joke around, etc. Also it is not permitted to make eye contact, smile or say hello.

I say,

It is better to risk a social interaction, even if there is a 99% chance of a negative consequence.

For example, in my every day life, I am surrounded by very unpleasant people. Yet regardless, I am ruthlessly friendly. I will always ask how they are doing, even if 99% of the time they might snub me in a bad way. But I say fuck it, better to be courageous and friendly than to be cowardly and standoffish.

No Fear

Just loaded up my Texas squat power bar at the gym, 925 pounds in total, that is nine plates, 25, and a five pounder taped on top. The interesting thing:

No fear.

The goal?

To me, courage is everything. Curiosity and courage actually mean the same thing; couer means heart. Same also goes with curate.

Whenever I max out the barbell, attempting to lift over 900 pounds, people are always befuddled and ask me why I do it, what the purpose of it is, etc. I never have a quick enough or witty enough response. Typically I just say,

To fulfill a personal curiosity.

The personal curiosity of the limits of a human body, my human body, how much I could lift, without taking steroids etc.

But perhaps, a better way to think about it is actually, I do it as a means to conquer fear. To me a perfect lift is a lift in which your approach it, give it your all without any hesitation or fear.

In fact, I believe that 99% of street photography is simply conquering your fears. To not let hesitation get in your way.

What do we regret?

I think I’d like, typically our biggest regrets or regrets related to cowardice, or fear. For example, you wanted to ask that one girl out on a date, but, you were afraid of getting rejected, and you never did. Or you were fearful for asking her to get married, and you never asked, because you were fearful.

I know for weightlifters, powerlifters, people like me who enjoy doing one rep max lifts, I think the biggest regrets we have is when we want to lift a certain weight, but fear and hesitation gets in our way, and instead, we lift a lesser amount, afraid that we may “hurt“ ourselves.

However, an interesting thing that I’ve learned is the fear of hurting yourself is actually a good motivator to force you to focus.

For example, now at the gym, I’m laser focused. I don’t fuck around. I don’t rush my warm-up routine, and I’ve also been going harder in my warm up, stretching, yoga routine before I lift.

Greater danger, greater fates

I forget if it is Heraclitus or Democritus who said this, but essentially the gist:

In life, the more that a man attempts, risks, and exposes himself to danger, the greater his legacy and fate.

Fortuna adiuvat Fortis, the tattoo on the back of John Wick. The basic ideas that lady Fortune favors those who are strong, brave, and maybe perhaps a little bit reckless.

Foolish versus wise fear?

There is some fear which is wise. For example, I am fearful of dying in a texting while driving accident, and therefore I never text message while I drive, let alone ever text message. I have all notifications turned off on my iPhone.

Also, with Seneca, I let him do superficially do “dangerous“ stuff, but when it is actually really really dangerous, I tell him. Fear of critical or irreversible injury to Seneca is a fear which is wise.

What is entrepreneurship anyways?

I think “to entrepreneur” should be seen as a verb. To risk, to attempt. Even the modern day notion of an essay, comes from the French assay, which literally means attempt. When you write a written essay, it isn’t some storehouse of irrefutable truth. Rather, it is an attempt for you, the writer, to gain a deeper truth about something.

Success or failure is trivial

For example, what do you think about king Leonidas and his spartan 300, they are not remembered because they beat the Persians, but rather, their courage.

However, Homer puts both Achilles and Hector on equal footing. In the eyes of Homer, both fighters, irregardless of their lethality, are both seen as equal.

Your life?

I think modern-day life, it may not be fear which holds us back but uncertainty. For example, last summer before me and Cindy went to Phnom Penh Cambodia [thoughts on Phnom Penh Cambodia vlog], I was simply a little bit on the fence, I didn’t know if it would be good or bad. I was may be a little bit indifferent.

Therefore the simple heuristic;

If something is even a little bit marginally interesting to you, or might be interesting, just do it.

If I think about my travels, I don’t think I’ve ever really had an experience in which traveling was a “net negative” experience for me. There has always been good which comes out of every travel experience, irregardless of how difficult it might have been, or some annoyances along the way.

For example, going to South Korea last year, I got massively annoyed by all of these backwards Confucian moralizing and ethics. But, much good came out of it, because it forced me to do a deep dive on the history of Confucius, Confucian teachings, in order to undermine it.

Often things which make you angry can be very productive.

Your life goals?

I think honestly speaking, I am the most encouraging person that I know. Even my mom said it was a dream of hers that I became some sort of motivational speaker or something.

Even when I think about my workshops, my passion and my goal is to encourage every single participant in person who attends. To not be a nay sayer, but to be an enabler.

Other people?

I have a theory about modern-day society and capitalism and consumerism; it is all predicated on making you feel small and inferior, and the promise of capitalism and consumerism is this:

If you work really really hard, and earn enough money, you can buy your happiness, your self-worth, your self-esteem through cars, jewelry, things, homes and possessions, commas and zeros in your bank account etc.

For me, what are my greatest enjoyment is going to the gym, simply going there as a sociologist, and analyzing people, their behavior, their speech patterns, etc.

Something I have discovered is when people tell you to be “careful“, they are simply crowdsourcing their own fear onto you.

For example, when people first started to see me Atlas lift over seven plates, eight plates, nine plates etc. even the really really strong guys would tell me in a hushed tone —

… but be careful.

When people tell me this, essentially what they are saying is,

I would never attempt that, because I am afraid that I would hurt myself if I tried.

Simple lesson: when other people crowd-source their fears onto you, it is simply a signal that they are the cowards, not you.

Now what?

I think in life, the best way to live is to always have something greater to aspire towards. For example, it is the joy of the weight lifter to indefinitely increase his or her one rep max, in any given lift. Also it is the joy of the entrepreneur to keep innovating, taking on new ideas, new creative paths, new risks.

[How to take more risks in life]

This is where a lot of people are foolish; they dream of the day that they could cash out their Silicon Valley unicorn for $1 billion, and then just chill on the beach for the rest of their lives. No. The true entrepreneur perhaps would actually never sell their company; For example, mad respect to Mark Zuckerberg for not selling out Facebook. The deep regret of Instagram and WhatsApp founders to selling to Facebook, and also the regret of the oculus founders for selling to Facebook.

Missionary or mercenary?

One good framing that I got from Peter Thiel in 0 to 1 is figuring out whether other people are missionaries or mercenary’s. Missionaries do it because their soul is in the game (Nassim Taleb), mercenaries simply do it for a fat check and a bonus and a salary.

In fact, the truly great entrepreneurs in history like a Steve Jobs and Elon Musk were actually quite ascetic.

For example, Steve Jobs lived like a weird homeless person, and even Musk first built x.com with his brother, sharing the same office space, sleeping in sleeping bags, showering at the local YMCA, and feeding himself on two dollars a day with nothing but hotdogs and spaghetti. Maybe this is where Kanye West is a bad entrepreneur; I think he cares too much for expensive and fancy things.

Legacy?

A lot of philosophers have thought about this, but the more I think about it, seeking immortal fame amongst mortals (Heraclitus) actually seems like a good idea. Why? Granted that you have kids, legacy and your fame after death is the only thing which could outlive you, and aid future humanity.

I think deep down, all humans are altruistic to a certain point. Thinking about legacy isn’t really considering your fame and notoriety after death, but rather, how your life has impacted those who are currently alive, and also people who are not yet born.

What are you capable of?

See what you can do, become or achieve with EK:

June 17th, Saturday, 2023: DOWNTOWN LA CONQUER YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY AND LIFE — New!
July 15–16th: ERIC KIM SAIGON VIETNAM TRAVEL STREET PHOTOGRAPHY EXPERIENCE 2023 — New!
Oct 14th (Saturday) PHILLY CONQUER STREET PHOTOGRAPHY — New!

Fear conquering consulting

Email Eric [at] EricKim.com

Now what?

Portable thinking: I still strongly believe that a semi nomadic life is probably the best approach of living. Therefore, never buy, purchase, invest in anything which is not portable with you. For example when you travel and live abroad, you can’t take your house, you can’t take your Tesla, you can’t take your Lamborghini etc. This also means that with your devices, make sure they are super portable.
Why bitcoin is the future, not Ethereum: the new BRC-20 ordinal theory with Bitcoin — the new ethereum killer. Don’t trust anything built on top of the Ethereum network. Further skepticism towards chainlink.

Now what?

Chat GPT is cool, WHY APP ZEN OF ERIC KIM is better. Chat GPT is like a very efficient Google. Why app, Zen of Eric, is more interesting because it forces you to do the thinking in philosophizing, not amalgamated intelligence scraping off of Google. I think for now Google is safe, because it has been embedded within chrome, and Safari, and it is now in official verb. But, maybe as open AI, ChatGPT continues to expand, google will become less and less useful. Bad News For Google.
I think the future is social spaces. For example, building new gyms which are social experiences, and also let us consider the massive success of an Irvine spectrum, in terms of all the foot traffic they can get.

Antifragile technology?

The new thoughts:

Building an anti-fragile website or web platform?
Can chain.link be used perhaps to facilitate more anti fragile things online, via the blockchain?
CRYPTO THOUGHTS

Forward the turbo thoughts!

Feeling a little bit of wind in your wings? Feel free to forward this to a friend or family member who could use the turbo!

ERIC KIM NEWS >

START HERE // BOOKS // WORKSHOPS

Start Here

ERICKIM — Wed, 24 May 2023 18:18:42 GMT

Start Here

The genesis of EK:

MASTERS-MOBILE-by-Eric-Kim-Cindy-Nguyen-Annette-Kim-HAPTICDownload

Learn From the Masters of Photography — Eric Kim COMPILATION PDFDownload

100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography ERIC KIMDownload

Quick start to the Masters of Photography

If you’re new to the masters of photography, start with the articles below:

Introduction to the Masters of Photography

Dear friend,

You’ve probably had this situation — when you’re at some fancy art show, and you hear another photographer “name drop” other famous photographers.

You nod your head in agreement, but you have no idea who these master photographers are.

Consider this guide as a way to de-mystify and de-elitize the masters of photography.

I never went to art school, or photo school. I had to self-teach myself all the masters of photography. And now that I know them, I want this guide to help you (assuming you don’t know any of the masters of photography).

This page is currently a work in progress. I will continue to make edits to this page, as there are a lot of masters to cover.

Let’s get started:

Chapter 1: “Old school” photographers

“He without a past has no future.”

To start off, let us start off chronologically.

I know a lot of these “old school” photographers might seem a bit boring. However, the reason their work still has lasted, because it is classic. They have paved the way for all of us in photography. They experimented with the medium of photography, and pushed it forward. They made photography an acceptable art form. We have a great deal of debt to pay them.

This period of time is roughly the 1920’s:

1. Andre Kertesz

I’d recommend first starting to learn about Andre Kertesz, who was one of the first photographers who inspired Henri Cartier-Bresson (essentially the “godfather” of street photography). Andre Kertesz harnessed the classic form of geometry to photography, and was prolific all the way until his death.

2. Henri Cartier-Bresson

Of course, you need to study the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who first took 35mm photography to the next level. He innovated the concept of the “decisive moment“, and saw photography as an “instant sketchbook.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson is a great starting point if you love black and white photography, geometry, and composition. Further resources on Henri Cartier-Bresson here:

3. Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz was a photographer, who first pushed photography to be taken acceptably as “art.” Photography wouldn’t be where it is today without him.

Chapter 2: “New school” photographers

I consider this “new school” of photographers the next wave of photographers who innovated in photography, from around the 1950’s onwards to the 1980’s:

4. Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand was probably one of the most prolific street photographers to have ever lived. He shot because he loved it, and he was one of the innovators of the 28mm lens, getting close to his subjects, and creating “edgy”, dynamic, and off-kilter compositions. Not all his photos are pretty, but his work ethic, distaste for the art world, and his down-to-earth humor makes him a master to study.

5. William Klein

William Klein is one of the most badass street photographers in history. He said what was on his mind, and said it the way he wanted. He was a “director on the streets” — he would often interact with his subjects, engage them, and this puts his soul in his photos.

Klein also was innovative with fashion photography, film, and inspired many other photographers, including the highly influential Japanese street photographer Daido Moriyama. In turn, Daido Moriyama inspired other master photographers such as Anders Petersen, and Jacob Aue Sobol.

Klein innovated using blur in his photos, high-contrast and grain, and multi-layered photos.

6. Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus is famous for photographing people on the fringes of society. Many of her portraits are a bit unsettling to look at, yet they show deep humanity and empathy. If you love shooting portraits, definitely check out Diane Arbus.

7. Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander is a funny photographer with a great wry sense of humor. He innovated in urban landscapes, creating complex scenes (without overlapping figures). Not only that, but his self-portraits have great humor and are quite introspective.

All the masters of street photography

If you’re ready to get your hands wet, see all the lessons from the masters of street photography below:

100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography

The Masters

Here is a full list of the masters:

To learn more, see Street Photography 101 >

FREE TURBO THOUGHTS

ERIC KIM NEWSLETTER >

LEARN FROM THE MASTERS OF ART

CRYPTO THOUGHTS

Crypto >

PHOTO THOUGHTS

Who is ERIC KIM?

ATTEMPT THE INSANELY EPIC

ERICKIM — Tue, 23 May 2023 02:43:32 GMT

https://youtu.be/mKztz0cqfiQ

Podcast

WASTE IS GOOD FOR INNOVATION

ERICKIM — Mon, 22 May 2023 22:02:49 GMT

To innovate more, you gotta waste more?

https://medium.com/media/707b860cd24fa04f3c2a2c1fa1345013/href

No Fear

ERICKIM — Mon, 22 May 2023 02:42:51 GMT

Just loaded up my Texas squat power bar at the gym, 925 pounds in total, that is nine plates, 25, and a five pounder taped on top. The interesting thing:

No fear.

The goal?

To me, courage is everything. Curiosity and courage actually mean the same thing; couer means heart. Same also goes with curate.

To fulfill a personal curiosity.

The personal curiosity of the limits of a human body, my human body, how much I could lift, without taking steroids etc.

But perhaps, a better way to think about it is actually, I do it as a means to conquer fear. To me a perfect lift is a lift in which your approach it, give it your all without any hesitation or fear.

In fact, I believe that 99% of street photography is simply conquering your fears. To not let hesitation get in your way.

What do we regret?

I know for weightlifters, powerlifters, people like me who enjoy doing one rep max of times, I think the biggest regrets we have is when we want to lift a certain weight, but fear and hesitation gets in our way, and instead, we lift a lesser amount, afraid that we may “hurt“ ourselves.

However, an interesting thing that I’ve learned is the fear of hurting yourself is actually a good motivator to force you to focus.

For example, now at the gym, I’m laser focused. I don’t fuck around. I don’t rush my warm-up routine, and I’ve also been going harder in my warm up, stretching, yoga routine before I lift.

Greater danger, greater fates

I forget if it is Heraclitus or Democritus who said this, but essentially the gist:

In life, the more that a man attempts, risks, and exposes himself to danger, the greater his legacy and fate.

Fortuna adiuvat Fortis, the tattoo on the back of John Wick. The basic ideas that lady Fortune favors those who are strong, brave, and maybe perhaps a little bit reckless.

Foolish versus wise fear?

What is entrepreneurship anyways?

Success or failure is trivial

For example, what do you think about king Leonidas and his spartan 300, they are not remembered because they beat the Persians, but rather, their courage.

Also interestingly enough, in the Iliad, in the duel between Achilles and Hector, Hector knows that Achilles is the superior fighter, and also, Achilles is a demigod, whereas Hector is a mere 100% human. However, Homer puts both Achilles and Hector on equal footing. In the eyes of Homer, both fighters, irregardless of their lethality, are both seen as equal.

Your life?

I think modern-day life, it may not be fear which holds us back but uncertainty. For example, last summer before me and Cindy went to Phnom Penh Cambodia, I was simply a little bit on the fence, I didn’t know if it would be good or bad. I was may be a little bit indifferent. Therefore the simple heuristic;

If something is even a little bit marginally interesting to you, or might be interesting, just do it.

Often things which make you angry can be very productive.

Your life goals?

I think honestly speaking, I am the most encouraging person that I know. Even my mom said it was a dream of hers that I became some sort of motivational speaker or something.

Even when I think about my workshops, my passion and my goal is to encourage every single participant in person who attends. To not be a nay sayer, but to be an enabler.

Other people?

I have a theory about modern-day society and capitalism and consumerism; it is all predicated on making you feel small and inferior, and the promise of capitalism and consumerism is this:

If you work really really hard, and earn enough money, you can buy your happiness, your self-worth, your self-esteem through cars, jewelry, things, homes and possessions, commas and zeros in your bank account etc.

For me, what are my greatest enjoyment is going to the gym, simply going there as a sociologist, and analyzing people, their behavior, their speech patterns, etc.

Something I have discovered is when people tell you to be “careful“, they are simply crowdsourcing their own fear onto you.

For example, when people first started to see me Atlas lift over seven plates, eight plates, nine plates etc. even the really really strong guys would tell me in a hushed tone —

… but be careful.

When people tell me this, essentially what they are saying is,

I would never attempt that, because I am afraid that I would hurt myself if I tried.

Simple lesson: when other people crowd-source their fears onto you, it is simply a signal that they are the cowards, not you.

Now what?

Missionary or mercenary?

In fact, the truly great entrepreneurs in history like a Steve Jobs and Elon Musk were actually quite ascetic.

Legacy?

What are you capable of?

See what you can do, become or achieve with EK:

June 17th, Saturday, 2023: DOWNTOWN LA CONQUER YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY AND LIFE — New!
July 15–16th: ERIC KIM SAIGON VIETNAM TRAVEL STREET PHOTOGRAPHY EXPERIENCE 2023 — New!
Oct 14th (Saturday) PHILLY CONQUER STREET PHOTOGRAPHY — New!

Fear conquering consulting

Email Eric [at] EricKim.com

Now what?

Portable thinking: I still strongly believe that a semi nomadic life is probably the best approach of living. Therefore, never buy, purchase, invest in anything which is not portable with you. For example when you travel and live abroad, you can’t take your house, you can’t take your Tesla, you can’t take your Lamborghini etc. This also means that with your devices, make sure they are super portable.
Why bitcoin is the future, not Ethereum: the new BRC-20 ordinal theory with Bitcoin — the new ethereum killer. Don’t trust anything built on top of the Ethereum network. Further skepticism towards chainlink.

Now what?

Chat GPT is cool, WHY APP ZEN OF ERIC KIM is better. Chat GPT is like a very efficient Google. Why app, Zen of Eric, is more interesting because it forces you to do the thinking in philosophizing, not amalgamated intelligence scraping off of Google. I think for now Google is safe, because it has been embedded within chrome, and Safari, and it is now in official verb. But, maybe as open AI, ChatGPT continues to expand, google will become less and less useful. Bad News For Google.
I think the future is social spaces. For example, building new gyms which are social experiences, and also let us consider the massive success of an Irvine spectrum, in terms of all the foot traffic they can get.

Forward the turbo thoughts!

Feeling a little bit of wind in your wings? Feel free to forward this to a friend or family member who could use the turbo!

ERIC KIM NEWS >

START HERE // BOOKS // WORKSHOPS

Goodbye Social Media, Hello ARS

ERICKIM — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 23:31:30 GMT

The Revolutionary New Photography Feedback Platform

Dear friend,

If you are sick of social media– say hello to ARS; the first productive online learning community for photographers and visual artists.

ARS BETA VERSION II

https://medium.com/media/67a8131cdddcad2bb6079fee5dd0f693/href

Join the revolution at ARSBETA.COM >

No more popularity contests

One of my biggest critiques of social media for photographers is this:

Whenever you upload a photograph to Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, etc– most people (to not hurt your feelings) will just say something generic like, ‘Nice shot!’

ARS changes everything. ARS is built with you in mind. No more having to ‘game’ the system to collect more likes, followers, and gain ‘social media traction’.

The upside of anonymity

Fair Algorithm: When you upload a photograph to ARSBETA.COM, your photograph is distributed equally and randomly to all ARS photographers, who will give you honest feedback and critique on your photos.
No ego: When you get constructive critique and feedback from others; it is a ‘double blind’ experiment. They don’t know who you are, and you don’t know who they are. Thus, the feedback is truly honest.
Not Driven by Advertising: ARSBETA.COM is our passion project. We plan on monetizing ARS in the future via paid and commissioned critiques. We vow NOT to have your user-experience polluted with annoying advertising. And our focus will always be on you, the user.

“What do you really think?”

I was also curious to see what people really thought about my pictures. I was always curious:

Are people saying that they like my picture, because they hope I ‘follow them back’, or because they genuinely like it?

Also,

If someone saw my picture (and didn’t know who I was), would they still like the picture?

The Solution: The Fair, Random, and Decentralized Algorithm of ARS

ARSBETA.COM Desktop screenshot

About a year ago while living in Vietnam, I came up with the basic idea of ARS:

A photography feedback platform, in which users would randomly get images (from other anonymous photographers), and they could also give anonymous feedback to other anonymous photographers.
We would keep the UI/UX (user interface/user experience) as clean, streamlined, and simple as possible. No distracting titles. When you’re shown the photo, you don’t know who shot it. And once you click ‘keep’ or ‘ditch’ for a photograph, you automatically advance to the next image.
Photographers would use ARSBETA.COM as a ‘beta testing ground’ for their images. If a photographer had a picture in which they weren’t sure whether the picture was good or not, they could upload it to ARS in order to get honest feedback and critique.

ARS BETA VERSION II

What is new and revolutionary with ARS BETA VERSION II?

ARS BETA VERSION I was a ‘MVP’ (minimum viable product). It was simple, clean, yet was quite bare-bones. Now with ARS BETA VERSION II, we now have the coveted and desired function — constructive critiques.

Furthermore my friend Kevin McKenzie (backend engineer who built the algorithm and codebase for ARS) sped up ARS– making it around 300% faster, while also integrating the front-end redesign made by Annette Kim. My friend Jun just joined the team as a backend/frontend/app developer for ARS — so also expect to see really cool advances in ARS BETA VERSION III (we are working towards a mobile app).

Why not just use Instagram?

If you don’t give a damn, best to use Instagram.

Instagram is a good platform to easily share your pictures, but the problem is this:

Instagram becomes a popularity contest, rather than a constructive critique/feedback platform for photography and visual art.

I really liked the early days of Instagram, when it was focused on photographers. Now it is infested with ‘lifestyle influencers’ — who essentially try to present a false and highly shiny version of their “happy” lives.

I also believe that Instagram is bad for photography and creativity– because photography turns into a quest to get more likes and followers, instead of you making authentic artwork which really expresses your soul.

Join the revolution: Art Revolution Society (ARS)

Desktop screenshot from ARSBETA.COM

I truly believe that photography is one of the most beautiful forms of art. Let us make art (ARS) ours again.

Why is it called ‘ARS Beta‘?

ARS means ‘art’ in Latin. Beta means a non-final version.

This means this:

Your artwork is always in beta testing.

This means, your artwork and photography is constantly in a state of becoming. You are constantly changing and evolving as a visual artist and poet. Thus, treat ARSBETA.COM as your personal testing ground for your new visual imagery. We believe that ARS BETA can make you bolder– it can encourage you to experiment more with your photography, and to also disconnect your ego from your own artwork.

We cannot shift the culture of photography alone. We must do this together!

How do I use ARS?

To get started, it is simple:

Go to ARSBETA.COM and signup with your Google Account.
Upload a photograph you would like constructive critique on.
Start rating and giving constructive critiques to other photographers!

And another big ask:

If you find ARSBETA.COM innovative, interesting, or revolutionary for photography — please share it with your friends! Email, text, or tell your friends to join and share their pictures!

ARS is just another option

ARSBETA.COM will not overthrow Facebook-Instagram. However, we wanted to create another option. If you needed a new place to share your pictures (while getting constructive critique), ARS is for you.

Don’t get left behind– join ARSBETA.COM today!

Love, the ARS TEAM:
ERIC, KEVIN, CINDY, ANNETTE, JUN

ARS BETA VERSION II Press Release

ARS is looking for investors and brand collaborators. E-mail arsbetahelp@gmail.com.

Share ARS with friends, family, and photographers! Let’s build a productive learning community together.

Download ARS Press Kit >

A Revolution in Photography Sharing, Learning, and Feedback

Official Press Release [September 28, 2018]
Silicon Valley, California

Be the first to join the revolution in photography — ARS. ARS is the first productive and authentic online learning community for photographers and visual artists.

ARS is an online photography feedback platform driven by giving and receiving honest and constructive critiques. Through the clean and minimalist interface, photographers can develop their visual acuity through uploading their own photos, viewing photographs and contributing constructive critiques to others.

ARS is a revolution in photo sharing. Photos and critiques are distributed to the user base anonymously and randomly. ARS disrupts the current monopoly in photography held by advertisement driven social media platforms (Instagram-Facebook) with a fair, decentralized, and anonymous algorithm. No more popularity contests and superficial ‘likes’ that homogenize art production and feedback.

You

ARS relies on YOU to change the future of photography. Upload your photos to ARS and start critiquing photos. ARS encourages artistic experimentation. Use ARS as a visual testing ground in order to share new visual imagery and develop your portfolio.

Share ARS with friends, family, and photographers! Let’s build a productive learning community together.

ARS is looking for investors, brand collaborators, and reviews. Be a part of our moonshot dreams for ARS. Read our Press Kit and e-mail arsbetahelp@gmail.com.

Let’s change the culture of photography together!

ARS Team [Eric Kim, Kevin Mckenzie, Cindy Nguyen, Annette Kim, Jun Kim]

To invest or collaborate with ARS, shoot us an email at arsbetahelp@gmail.com

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Build Your Own Instagram!

ERICKIM — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 06:12:19 GMT

Digital Share Cropping // original photo by Jack Delano

About a year ago I deleted my Instagram; and it has been the best thing for my focus, my creative power, and happiness!

- Why I Am Happier After Deleting My Instagram
- Why You Should Delete Your Instagram

Let me try to give you some #realtalk

First of all, the truth is that Instagram is the most powerful platform right now for photographers, visual artists, creatives, etc. Facebook is essentially dead. Snapchat isn’t an effective place to share artwork. YouTube is still very good– but not the ‘ideal’ place to share photos. Flickr is essentially dead (recently got bought out by Smugmug). Tumblr is essentially dead. Twitter is kind of dead, and has never really been used by photographers.

So the sad reality:

If you’re a photographer, your only real ‘option’ to get followers, likes, comments, etc — is to use Instagram.

Trust me, after deleting my Instagram about a year ago, I have been SO MUCH HAPPIER, productive, and I’ve been so much more inspired in my photography! I realized that the algorithms behind Facebook/Instagram (Instagram is owned by Facebook, and oh yeah, Facebook also owns What’s app btw) was controlling too much of my thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.

I started to get suckered by the algorithm: I knew that if I wanted to maximize my own likes/follower count — I needed to post optimally only once a day, exactly at noon pacific time.

And even though when I deleted my Instagram I had around 50,000+ followers — I averaged between 1,000 to 2,000 likes per photo. But this was the funny thing:

When my baseline of a photo was 2,000 likes per photo, whenever I got anything less than 2,000 likes — I felt depressed!

Anchoring effects with social media/like/follower numbers

Why did this happen? Well, the psychological problem of ‘anchoring’. The idea is that once we get ‘anchored’ to a certain number (whether monetary, whether follower or like numbers, salary number, etc) — whenever we see that number go down, we get sad/anxious/depressed!

For example, as a thought experiment, let’s ask ourselves– who is ‘happier’?

Photographer Adam who starts off with 50 followers, and gets 1,000 followers in a month.

Photographer Betty who starts off with 100,000 followers, then a month later drops to 80,000 followers.

I would argue that photographer A (Adam) would be happier! Even though he has fewer followers than Betty! Why? The increase is what psychologically makes us happy — not the maximum sum of followers we have!

Anchoring in money/salary

Now this is super funny, because the same happens in money.

For example let’s use the same analogy — who is happier?

Adam who started off making $30,000 a year after graduating college, then gets a raise after one year and now earns $40,000 a year.

Betty who started off making $100,000 a year and doesn’t get a raise for 2 years straight.

Of course Adam would be happier! Why? He sees progress in his salary going up! Whereas Betty feels depressed, because she feels stuck (even though she makes way more money than Adam!!!)

Now taking it back to photography and social media/Instagram — we are happiest when we are getting more likes, more followers, etc.

But the thing is this — Instagram might end up being the next Xanga, LiveJournal, MySpace, the next Facebook, the next Flickr, or the next Tumblr (will eventually die/lose relevance). To be honest; I think Instagram will be around for at least another decade– but who knows whether Instagram will be around 20 years from now?

Then consider, you have 100,000 followers on Instagram 10 years from now (in year 2028). But, you must pay Facebook (who owns Instagram) $50 to “boost” your post, to access more of your followers! Imagine a world where you have 100,000 followers on Instagram, but whenever you post something, only 100 of your followers see your post (engagement levels are already that low on my Facebook fan page). What will you do? You’ll be screwed!

How does the Facebook/Instagram news feed algorithm work?

Buffer did a good blog post about the Facebook news feed algorithm (as of 2018) — which is essentially this:

If you want to maximize your views/likes on your content, you need to do the following:

Don’t post too often (ideally once a day is best)
Focus on posting photos/videos
Comment a lot, or try to publish your material which encourages people to comment
Single images get more engagement than albums

Essentially the algorithm is a game. You need to tweak the different variables to maximize your reach and “engagement”, which include:

How often you post
What time you post
What kind of content you post
What kind of caption you put in the post

The reason why I think this is bad for photographers/content creators/entrepreneurs, or humans:

We focus on maximizing our social reach and engagement numbers, rather than making personally-meaningful artwork, and it prevents us from innovating (because we become slaves to the Facebook algorithm).

Once again to remind you — Facebook bought Instagram a few years ago for $1 billion dollars. Facebook is starting to roll out more of their news feed algorithm to Instagram — which means over time, you’re going to get less engagement on your Instagram, and you’re going to have to pay lots of $$$ to access your followers.

To learn more about Facebook and their news feed algorithm, google: “Facebook F8“, which is their developer conference. Here’s a recap of Facebook F8 in 2017 or the Facebook F8 Wikipedia page.

Kind of a creepy innovation they’re working on:

Building 8 project aiming to allow people to type straight from their brain and hear through their skin — Learn More

Anyways, this is the trend:

Facebook wants to control all aspects of your social, online, and digital creativity life.

Which means less creative control for you!

The solution: Build your own website, blog!

The solution: make your own website, blog, and platform! Don’t build your own empire in quicksand, and certainly don’t become a digital ‘share-cropper’ (building your following and platform solely on Facebook/Instagram/YouTube/etc).

Essentially what you wanna do is this:

Pay for your own website hosting: This can be via bluehost.com, 1and1.com, or any other online ‘hosting’ provider.
Install ‘wordpress.org’ framework onto your provider. WordPress is the ‘backend’ or the ‘content management system’ — which allows you to post and upload your content.
WordPress.org is the best, because it is ‘open source’, the dominant open source blogging/website platform, and has tons of free plugins, themes, documentation, etc.
For theme, I recommend Genesis Theme: Best theme/frame, with lots of beautiful themes that work very well (this is what I currently use).
As an experiment: spend an entire month NOT posting anything directly to Facebook or Instagram. Instead, post it to your own website/blog! Then you can share the link TO YOUR BLOG POST to Facebook, or share it with your friends via email.

If you’re curious, a website/blog is essentially the same thing (you can customize this on wordpress admin, to either make it more blog-centric, or more website-centric).

How to get discovered/get more views/followers/etc

As a practical tip, for your own sanity — DISABLE statistics! Ignore your view counts. Disable comments. This will be bad for your self-esteem. Just make stuff that you’re interested in, and share it on your blog!

Basic blogging principles:

Don’t treat blogging too seriously: Make something 80% good enough and hit ‘publish’.
There’s no such thing as a perfect blog post: Embrace this! I’ve written over 4,000+ blog posts from 2010–2018 on this blog, and I’m still learning!
Make content you would like to consume: You cannot create content that will please everyone. Solution: Make stuff you would like to read!
Pave your own path: There’s no right or wrong way to blog — just follow your own gut, and have fun with it!

Why not Squarespace or other website builders?

Squarespace is a good platform to make a website easily, but I’m a bit skeptical of it– because there is too much power and control centralized in their service. I also see theres gonna be less flexibility in their platform later on.

Censorship on Instagram/Facebook

When I had an Instagram, I uploaded the above picture, and got it removed because it didn’t fit the ‘community guidelines’ of Instagram/Facebook.

WTF?

Well — I get it. They saw a NAZI Swatstika photoshopped onto the KKK costume — and someone perhaps reported ERIC KIM as being some pro-nazi white supremacist.

Yet, I later uploaded this photo, and it was OK:

But the question is — why did I even upload that image?

I was trying to make a cultural critique/commentary in a POSITIVE WAY. I wanted to say:

Hey guys, let’s be careful to NOT allow another Nazi genocide from happening, especially in America! #antihitler

Which made me realize– there is no ‘freedom of speech’ on Facebook, Instagram, or pretty much any social media platform. Which is technically okay — because these companies are NOT benevolent governments which allow freedom of speech.

For example in America, you can say anything you want in the streets and NOT get imprisoned. However, you cannot say anything you want on Facebook or Instagram– because Facebook is a privately-held company.

Which makes me concerned with What’s App (was bought by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion dollars!!!) Don’t you think that one day, Facebook might start spying on your What’s App messages, or perhaps monitor/censor it (maybe one day)?

And isn’t it a bit concerning that Brian Acton (co-founder of Whats App) told us to #DeleteFacebook?

Solution: join SIGNAL (encrypted messaging system):

Signal App: For Android, iPhone, and Desktop

Other concerning news about Facebook/Instagram

Sean Parker (the guy who started Napster, and was also one of the initial investors in Facebook) spoke at an AXIOS event and said why Facebook was so addictive, and why they built it the way they did:

“We needed to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever… It’s a social validation feedback loop… You’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology … [The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway.”

Dopamine is the little hormone that makes you feel good every time you ‘accomplish’ something which your brain perceives as positive — like leveling up in a video game, getting a business deal, getting a ‘like’ on your Facebook/Instagram post, etc. Social media has been wired to hack your brain– to make you more and more addicted to social media.

Also Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya admitted personal guilt on hacking human biases:

“I feel tremendous guilt. I think we all knew in the back of our minds — even though we feigned this whole line of, like, there probably aren’t any bad unintended consequences.”

He said that the “short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops” that Facebook enforces are “destroying how society works” — “no civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.”

The biggest problem: we are getting socially programmed in a negative way:

Personally, Chamath says he avoids social media because he “innately didn’t want to get programmed” and his kids are “not allowed to use this shit.”

Furthermore, he suggested that it is often smart folks who get more easily programmed– because they think they’re too smart:

“Don’t think, ‘Oh yeah, not me, I’m fucking genius, I’m at Stanford. You’re probably the most likely to fucking fall for it. Cause you are fucking check-boxing your whole goddamn life.”

Chamath is now founder and CEO of ‘Social Capital‘ — seeking to use money to make a positive social change.

How to build your own website/blog

Okay, I’m getting off topic as always. Some resources for you:

Photography Entrepreneurship 101

Never stop innovating: “Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Photography Entrepreneurship“.

Put a Dent in the Universe.

Why You Must Ignore Nay-Sayers to Succeed in Entrepreneurship, Business, and Life

ERICKIM — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 01:30:35 GMT

Dear friend,

In order to succeed in life, you must learn to ignore nay-sayers.

First of all, what is a “nay-sayer”? A nay-sayer is someone who always says “nay” or “no” to your ideas or dreams, without giving you any constructive ideas how you can actually realize your dreams.

Exploring the psychology of nay sayers

Honestly if you have friends, family, or colleagues who are nay-sayers, they probably aren’t being sinister. Rather, they might just be risk-averse individuals who are afraid of seeing you take a risk. They might be nay sayers because they’re risk-assess in their own lives (they prefer to take the safe option), and they don’t have the same appetite of risk as you do.

Or they may be envious that you’re taking an interesting risk in your life, and they want to secretly see you fail, because if you succeed, they will feel bad about themselves.

Another idea: nay sayers have poisoned minds, and they lack self confidence, because they’ve been told their entire lives that they lack talent and ability. Perhaps their parents were also nay-sayers.

Break the chain

Identify the nay-sayers in your life, and slowly start to distance yourself from them. Nay sayers are dangerous, because they start to subtly infect your psychology, and prevent you from pursuing your dreams in life.

But also be wise. Don’t label everyone as a nay-sayer. There might be some of your friends and family who might give you cogent, rational, and useful advice. But always take the ideas, opinions, and feedback from others with a grain of salt. If you have a truly innovative idea in life, of course everything is going to think you’re crazy. For example, imagine the early days of Airbnb and Uber — wouldn’t you have been seen as crazy to rent a room to a stranger, or ride in the car of a stranger?

Yay sayers

Rather, spend more time with yay or yes sayers. People who offer practical and constructive ideas to help you achieve your dreams.

In improv comedy, there is a concept called “yes and…”. The basic concept is that these improvisation artists will figure out how your even “bad” idea can be made into a good idea. The basic idea is that every bad idea might have even an ounce of a good idea — you just must figure out how to best effectively leverage that idea, transform that idea, or choose the best nugget of gold from that idea.

I don’t think there are really “bad” or “good” ideas. Rather, it is about execution, timing, hustle, drive, and a little bit of luck.

So friend, if you’re trying to become a photography entrepreneur, start your own business, or take a nontraditional or nonconformist route in life, cut the nay sayers from your life.

And for yourself, learn to be a yay or yes sayer. Figure out how you can empower your friends, family, and help them realize their dreams. Don’t tell them why their ideas will fail, rather offer potential solutions which will increase the likelihood of their dreams being realized.

BE BOLD,

ERIC

How to Express Yourself Through Photography

ERICKIM — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 10:32:23 GMT

Dear friend,

One of the best joys in photography is having the opportunity to express yourself.

Self-expression

In Zen and Buddhism, we are often told to ‘kill the ego.’ But I think if we are wise enough, we can turn our ego into our slave, rather than be the slave of our ego.

What that means is this:

Use your ego in a positive way.

What is an ‘ego’ anyways?

To me, I would define ‘ego’ as your concept of yourself. It is a combination of your memories, who you think you are, your preferences, your life experiences, and your personal life philosophy.

Self-expression is, and must be egotistical.

Yet, modern society tells us:

To be egotistical and self-centered is evil.

But– at the same time, we are told to “express our feelings” and that self-expression shouldn’t be repressed.

We are getting mixed signals from society. How can we express ourselves and our feelings, if we are told that being egotistical is evil?

Why Express Ourselves?

Let’s tackle an interesting question:

Why express ourselves?

This is my theory:

You must express yourself, because you have valuable opinions and perspectives about the world.
You can help empower others by expressing yourself, and sharing your positive thoughts with others.
By having the bravery and confidence to express yourself, you will give others the confidence to also express themselves.

In short, by expressing yourself, you help society. You help society by sharing your positive views to change the world for the better, and you also help society by helping empower individuals — giving them confidence in themselves.

Practical ideas:

1. Don’t censor yourself

If you see a photograph that you find interesting, shoot it, and share it. Don’t censor yourself, by being worried: “What will others think?”

Often we become the slave of fear– we fear what others will think of us, and this prevents us from expressing ourselves.

But the truth is,

We are all weird.

We are all weird, strange, and that is exactly what makes us unique and valuable.

Society and the ecology thrives on diversity. If you didn’t have a divergent and diverse range of thoughts, opinions, and ideas– you would just be another vanilla clone in society.

Fortunately you are not just another cloned stormtrooper. You are a Jedi Knight– don’t fear what others will think of you.

2. Make fun of yourself

A stoic technique I employ:

I predict the criticisms I will receive, and I won’t defend myself.

Some of the best ways to “defend” yourself is to just not defend yourself. Or just make fun of yourself.

For example, I will say:

“Yeah, that ERIC KIM guy is pretty crazy, and doesn’t know what he is talking about.”

This will allow you to express yourself to the fullest, without worrying about how others will criticize you.

3. Don’t become paralyzed by perfectionism

One of the worst diseases that we suffer from is perfectionism. I know a lot of people who suffer from depression, because they have this notion that everything they do must be ‘perfect.’ This paralyzes them– because they are too afraid of failure.

Of course conversely — you can be a perfectionist in a positive way, if you use your perfectionist tendencies to make the best possible product for your audience/user. But, don’t become paralyzed by perfectionism.

Steve Jobs once said, “Real artists ship [publish].” In computer technology, to ‘ship’ a product is to produce it and sell it. For us as photographers, to ‘ship’ a photograph is to publish it. To publish a photograph means to share it on social media, to print it, or to make a book of it, to make a slideshow of your photos, or to just send your photos to your friends and family via email.

I’m most inspired by children– they are the best artists. No child is a ‘perfectionist’. They make art for fun, and when they are bored or finished, they move onto the next one, or just decide to go outside and play at the park.

Even if we consider this philosophically– none of us are perfect. Therefore, it is okay to publish and share imperfect photos.

And if we think about a philosophy of aesthetics, slight imperfections makes something or someone more beautiful. The Japanese call this ‘wabi-sabi‘– the wear and tear of something makes patina beautiful.

For example, I find the wrinkles in older women beautiful. I think women are the most beautiful when they proudly let their silver hair flow, instead of being so paranoid about always dying their hair. Or I find extreme beauty in people who proudly show their scars on their faces — kind of like ‘Kintsugi‘ (the Japanese art of repairing broken pots with golden glue, which highlights the ‘imperfection’ and shows it as beautiful).

4. Honor thy selfie

I think selfie photography is probably one of the best ways of self-expression. To make a selfie of yourself is being very honest with yourself– embracing your self-image, and also self-empowering yourself to shoot yourself how you want to shoot yourself. You can control the camera angles, the background, and the perspective. You can also shoot however many selfies you want to before you are satisfied with the final image.

I often make selfies to reflect my mental state. When I’m feeling depressed and gloomy, I will often shoot selfies, looking down, or away from the camera. When I’m feeling happy and elated, I smile a lot in my selfies. When I’m feeling artsy or in the zone, I will often obscure my eyes in my selfie, and make my selfies more open-ended.

However you feel emotionally– make selfies of yourself, and examine how you feel, how you look, and what you want to communicate to your viewer with your selfie.

And remember with selfies: you don’t need to publish/share them. You can just keep them for yourself.

5. Make social commentary

You probably have opinions on economics, politics, and social issues. Don’t hide your opinions– share your perspectives through your photography.

Use your photography to be selective, to make social commentary/critique.

For example, in my “Suits” series, I showed men in suits looking mostly miserable. It was a reflection of my perspective of feeling empathy for people trapped in corporate jobs that they hate. And of course, this is just my perspective– a lot of people who wear suits to work are actually very happy with their jobs. But this isn’t about presenting a perspective that fits the worldview of everyone– it is about presenting my own personal perspective with the rest of the world with my photos.

Therefore don’t seek to make photos that please everyone. Be open to bifurcating your audience– to make people either really love or really hate you. Once again, don’t censor yourself– be brutally honest through your photos, about how you view society.

Photography can change the world, if you are able to make your viewer feel compassion and empathize with the subjects of your photos, to change their worldview and perspective.

Conclusion

The more I philosophize about photography — I realize more and more that photography is less about making photos and images. I think photography is more about self-expression, about finding joy in everyday living, and also using the tool as a way to make social critique.

To me this is exciting– photography as a tool is much more powerful than we think it is.

So friend, let us go beyond Instagram, social media, and trying to get a bunch of likes in photography. “How many likes is enough?” I know for myself, enough is never enough– in terms of seeking external validation from others.

Become more self-focused, and more centered in your photography. Treat photography as zen-meditation, treat photography as self-therapy, and use photography as a way to clean your mind, and find more gratitude in life.

Always smile, and shoot with a grateful heart.
Eric

PHOTO JOURNAL

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How to find more joy in your life with photography:

The Zen of Formatting Your Cards

ERICKIM — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 23:25:37 GMT

The Zen of Deleting Your Photos

Why is it so scary for us to delete and format our photos?

Photos are us.

This is my theory:

We see our photos as our personal memories. We see our memories as who we are. Therefore, by erasing our photos, we are erasing our memories, and we are erasing ourselves.

I have personal experiences having hard drives crash in the past. I lost thousands of personal photos from college — very personal memories.

When I found out my hard drive crashed and I couldn’t recover the photos and files — it literally felt like a piece of myself, inside my heart and soul died. I would pay anything to get those memories back.

Yet — I learned:

Our memories are more important than the photos.

Do photos tell the ‘truth’?

We make the sucker mistake of thinking that our photos are the most important thing — that our photos are real ‘physical proof’ of our memories, and our past selves.

Even in the movie Blade Runner, the Replicants have printed photographs. They believe they are ‘human’ because they have memories, in the ‘real’ form of photographs.

But — we are not our photos. Our memories are not the photos. And not only that — but photos aren’t any more ‘real’ than our memories of the events that have occurred to us in the past.

Does anyone ever frown in a family portrait?

Let me give you an example — let’s say you have a family photo of you, lets say at Disneyland, all smiling. The photograph doesn’t necessarily tell the truth — who knows — maybe you all smiled for the camera (but in reality, it was a horrible day).

Photographs are just propaganda of our past selves. Almost nobody frowns in a family photograph.

What is more important than photography?

This is important to know:

Living life to the fullest, and keeping the memories in our minds, hearts, and souls are more important than making photographs of it.

I still like to make photographs of my day-to-day life, and personally-meaningful events. Yet, I have to remind myself:

Don’t over-value the photographs, or see them as the most important thing.

People are more important than photographs. Also, your personal filtered memories of the past are more important than the photographs.

Because photographs can only show reflected light, and physical surfaces. Photographs cannot show smell, emotion, or the complex lattice-work of events that have happened in the past. The past, memories, and personal happenings are far more complex than just a simple photograph.

The joy of deleting your photos

Going back to photos — there is a certain zen of formatting your SD cards, or even deleting old photos.

Don’t be a digital hoarder — know that you are not your photos. Don’t be afraid to delete your photos.

My suggestion:

Before you delete a photo, smile, re-live the memory vividly, and try to commit it to your memory. Then smile (again), and hit delete.

Why delete photos of the past? So you can make NEW MEMORIES, to live in the present, and to look forward to the future.

Live and love your life, ERIC

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