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What is the best shoe for photography?

Wear black shoes

Choose a shoe that doesn’t attract attention. Put away those bright red shoes and choose some darker (preferably black) shoes. If you’re shooting street photography, wearing bright red shoes will attract the wrong attention. Try to go stealth.

My suggestion: find a sneaker that is 80% ‘good enough’ for your needs, and just stick with one pair

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A fun idea: as a modern photographer, you are no longer a ‘photographer’, but an ‘imager’— someone who makes images.

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Life is a child playing at the beach Some people get discouraged. They ask themselves:

If I build these sandcastles, what is the point of building it– if it is just going to be washed away by the ocean anyways?

This is the way that nihilist losers think. Nihilism: the philosophy that ‘life is not worth living’ (‘nihil’ means nothingness).

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Photography gives me a reason to SEE the real world around me — rather than being trapped in the black mirror prison of false reality, Netflix specials, and endless social media streams.

Why live “false reality” through TV, movies, and media? Why not experience the real world — with #nofilter? Just you and your camera.

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Elbow Framing

Another nice shot: first starts off from the back of Trinity (her arms behind her head, with elbows in a triangle shape), then the next shot you see the cop’s head framed in-between her elbows/arms:

Note the triangles made with the elbows:

Then in the next shot, note the new angle, with the elbows blocking out the rest of the shot:

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Then Neo is prompted to ‘wake up’. Kind of us like us– we must all wake up from our techno-dream-daze of false reality:

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One of the most visually-iconic things from the film is the iconic System-Green Kanji Computer Code:

To me the symbolism of the computer-code kanji is significant, because in some ways– the information we perceive in the real world can all eventually be abstracted into data. It is how we interpret this data which creates our own reality.

[Editot’s note: That’s not Kanji. It’s Katakana]

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I just finished re-watching the MATRIX; and oh man, this movie is so epic– not only in terms of the concept behind the film, but the ‘pop philosophy’ sayings are pretty good as well. And the cinematography is pretty solid as well.

Anyways, here are some of my takeaways from the film, in terms of philosophy:

You can create your own reality. “There is no spoon” means that you can bend your own perception of reality.We are special — the rules don’t apply to us.If we lose self-belief (like how Neo says, “I can’t do this”) then we will lose.Nobody likes that they don’t have control over their lives.A lot of modern society blinds us from our own inner-truth.The truth: we are slaves to the system of 9-5 employment, in order to ‘make a living’, and we are also constantly suckered by advertising/marketing/consumerism to continue playing this capitalist game.The true prison is the prison of our own minds; we create our own self-inflicted prisons, yet we don’t know that we can break out of it, and that “there are no rules”.Taking the red pill (true reality) is better than taking the blue pill (false reality). By taking the red pill, we are like Alice from Alice in Wonderland — we discover “How deep the rabbit hole goes” (seeking truth).“Time is always against us”: Life is of limited time; our lives is figuring out how to best effectively utilize our human metabolism before we die.Rebirth: Themes of rebirth are prevalent through the film — like when Neo takes the red pill, and wakes up into the “real world”.

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What if you had your own treadmill, or dynamic treadmill at home, and while you’re walking on it, you put on a virtual reality headset. You will be totally transported to a different world, and be active (moving), while in virtual reality! Would you come up with new/creative and epic ideas? Would it be an effective treatment for curing depression or anxiety? And what if while we’re in virtual reality, we could use virtual keyboards while we’re inside to type, and write epic poetry or any other creative writing things?

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How do you learn how to see as a photographer?

First of all, we need to reset and recalibrate our eyes.

How do we do that?

As an experiment, go into a pitch black room. Then stay in there for several minutes. Then turn on your phone. Note that even at the lowest brightness setting, your phone will blind the shit out of you.

Yet, if you look at your phone at maximum brightness on a bright and sunny day, it is hard to read what is on your phone.

What’s the deal? Well— we become more sensitive to the light in the darkness. Our eyes increase their “ISO sensitivity”— your eyes are like night vision, they pick up even minute patches of light.

The analogy is in real life, in modern life — our eyeballs are constantly over-stimulated by screens.

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A fun idea: as a modern photographer, you are no longer a ‘photographer’, but an ‘imager’— someone who makes images.

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How to Walk

When you’re shooting on the streets, walk slowly and gracefully. With each step considered and firm.

Look around you, and pan— slowly. Be like a child, don’t feel rude to stare at people. If you make eye contact with a stranger, don’t just turn away in embarrassment. Rather, meet their eye, and smile gently and give them a nod.

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I take more pictures to guarantee a higher chance of capturing “the decisive moment.”

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Essentially, the reason I want to buy a Lamborghini is to become more ‘self-realized’ like Kanye West. And I think buying a Lamborghini will do that.

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For me, I used to own so many different clothes, outfits, and colors. I did this mostly to look cool, get girls (in high school/college), and to boost my self-esteem (pretty low a long time ago).

Now, I see clothing as armor. I need clothing to protect me from freezing to death. But besides that, clothing is a waste of time.

This is the outfit I wear everyday:

Black long-sleeve cotton Uniqlo button-up shirt Black V-Neck Mesh T-Shirt (Uniqlo) Black jeans/leggings pants (Uniqlo) — nice and stretchy Black Nike Free Run Motion RN (flexible, light, comfortable) Black ExOfficio Boxer Briefs Black Drymax Socks Life is so much easier this way. I wake up, and know exactly what I will wear. It is just one less decision I need to make in my life. Now I understood why Steve Jobs had his ‘uniform’ (black turtleneck, blue jeans) he wore everyday. Same as Mark Zuckerberg (Grey t-shirt, jeans).

In clothing now, I remind myself to prevent ‘paralysis by analysis’ when shopping: All black everything.

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I also often feel grief whenever I get negative comments on the internet. At first, it really hurt me, deep into my soul.