What I Love About Making Photos

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Yesterday, I did some modeling for my friend, Quincy, who’s practicing his portraiture. It was a special session for a lot of reasons. Quincy’s dad inspired me to take photography seriously, and seeing that desire to tell stories click in Quincy is super cool. I also loved watching how he worked: what caught his eye, how playful he was in how he framed his shots, and how he engaged with me, which is probably the most important (and hardest) part of portraiture.

Quincy asked me two questions that surprised me, and I’ve been mulling them over ever since. First, he asked me what I loved about making photos. Believe it or not, I think that’s the first time anyone has asked me that question.

One reason I got into photography in the first place was regret. When I went started college many eons ago, my parents gifted me a point-and-shoot film camera so that I could capture some of the good times. I took maybe two rolls of film in my entire time at school. I just couldn’t be bothered. I basically have zero records of my good times in college, which is a bummer. It didn’t take long for the regret to settle in, and I got good at making sure I captured things shortly after graduation.

I’m so glad that I did. I love having a journal of my life that required very little effort to make. (Digital, then smartphones, have been a godsend in this regard.) Looking over old photos does something for me inside. It doesn’t matter what I take photos of or how good the photos are.

But I only started taking photography seriously seven years ago, and that process has been a revelation. I loved how it felt to be new and bad at something in my late 30s. I feel like I’m growing every time I make photos. I love the different part of my brain that it activates. It’s also calming. My friend, Yi (another person who inspires me to make), recently gave a talk on creative practices and the difference between activities that fill you up versus drain you. Perhaps the simplest way for me to answer Quincy’s question is that making photos fills me up.

The thing I love the most about photography is that it’s taught me to slow down and see beauty. I constantly notice things today that I know I never would have noticed before, and it always gives me a jolt of delight and satisfaction, even if I’m not holding my camera.

Quincy also asked about the favorite photos I’ve taken. I don’t have too many favorites. I have a lot of photos that give me a deep sense of satisfaction, not necessarily because they’re good, but because they remind me of something. But the photo that immediately came up for me when he asked this question was this one I took of my partner while we were exploring a farm together last year:

First and foremost, it stirs up good memories. Coincidentally, we were on our way to meet up with Quincy’s family and other friends to camp and feast. The land beyond the fence is Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, including olive trees they harvest to make and sell olive oil.

I also like the composition. I like the lines from the tire track and the tall grass. I like the tree in the middle. I like how the color of my partner’s dress contrasts with the rest of the scene. I love her reflection in the puddle from recent rains. It feels so representative of how much she loves nature and how curious and comfortable she is when she’s outdoors.

I also like the complexity of the photo. It’s not just a beautiful picture out in nature. Human impact — from the tire tracks to the fence to the torn plastic tarp — is clear and evident. It’s jarring, and it stirs up complex feelings.

Olivia de Recat’s Closeness Lines

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

A few months ago, I came across Olivia de Recat’s art, specifically her rendition of “closeness lines over time.”

I was struck and moved by how simple and moving and information dense this piece was. It really shows how a few simple lines can tell a compelling story.

You can see her other art and buy a print of this and other pieces on her website.

One Second Every Day of 2019

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s one second of video from every day of 2019:

Here’s the two second version from December:

And here are all the two-second videos from previous months:

This was a super fun, relatively low key, and very meaningful project. Many thanks to the good folks at 1 Second Everyday both for the inspiration and also the app. I highly encourage folks give it a shot. Try it for a week or a month, and see how you like it.

I also highly encourage folks to take on a making-everyday project, whether it’s for a week, a month, a year, or even longer. This was my second 365 project — I did a photo a day project in 2015. Once again, I learned a lot, I got to exercise some new creative storytelling muscles, and I had a lot of fun (I took this one much less seriously than my photography project). Most importantly, it helped me deepen many of my relationships, and it reminded me of the beauty that surrounds me every day. It was a great way to end the decade. Happy New Year!

Two Seconds a Day in January 2019

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Toward the end of my photo a day project in 2015, several people asked me if I was going to do it again in 2016. “Heck, no!” I responded. That project meant a lot to me (still does), and I loved doing it, but it was a lot of work, it took up a lot of mental and emotional headspace, and I was burned out on sharing.

Still, once you get into the habit of making, it’s hard to break. It just feels good to make something every day, to watch a little bit of incremental effort become a body of work. And it’s especially nice when it serves as a kind of journal of your life.

Even though I was saying no to doing another 365 photo project, I had started toying with the idea of doing a one second of video a day project. I had seen a few of these floating around on the Internet, and I was amazed by how much a single second of video could capture.

I started playing around with this at the beginning of 2016 and didn’t even get through a week. Over the next few years, I tinkered with other daily project ideas, but wasn’t motivated enough to do one.

I decided to revisit the one second a day idea this month. You can see the results above. I started with one second a day, and really liked it, but when I showed it to others, they said it was too fast. I decided to go with two seconds instead, and I like it even better.

Doing this was much less stressful than my 365 ever was. First, it was only 31 days. I might do another month, but I haven’t decided yet. Second, I’m not sharing every day. Third, video is much more forgiving than photography. You get two more dimensions — movement and sound — to capture something interesting. Fourth, I don’t care that much about getting good at video right now. I’m just playing, which is pretty liberating.

That said, I’m slightly more primed to capture video than I was three years ago. I’ve been inspired by several friends and colleagues (and, in some cases, their kids) who often produce simple, but really fun and compelling videos. My experience with photography helps. I also read Walter Murch’s outstanding, In the Blink of an Eye, a few years ago, and it made me see video in a whole different light. Finally, the 1 Second Everyday app makes it super easy to compile and edit your videos. (The iOS version is superb. Sadly, the Android version is terrible.)

Darkest Hour: Nuanced Historical Flick or Meme-ish Schlock?

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Darkest Hour is about the World War II events that took place in Great Britain from May 10 through June 4, 1940 — Neville Chamberlain’s resignation as prime minister, Winston Churchill’s ascension, France falling to Nazi Germany (including the siege at Calais), the miraculous evacuation of over 330,000 British troops at Dunkirk, all culminating in Churchill’s decision not to enter into peace talks with Hitler, which led to the Battle of Britain.

I enjoyed the movie. It was entertaining, well crafted, and beautifully acted, and I think the choice to focus on that single, eventful month was an excellent one. Gary Oldman is physically the exact opposite of Churchill, yet he absolutely disappears into the role. I also thought the movie was nicely and importantly nuanced until the end (where it devolves into a schlocky mess).

In particular, it highlighted Churchill’s spotty track record prior to his ascension, his politically precarious position, and the strategic, emotional, and moral complexity around decisions that will unavoidably cost lives. It offered a little taste of coalition politics, which I find especially fascinating these days as I wonder about the future of the two-party system in the U.S. I also felt more empathetic to the strongly differing viewpoints of the time, especially to Chamberlain and Viscount Halifax. It’s so much easier to judge when you have the benefit of hindsight.

I wouldn’t say the ending ruined the whole movie for me (a surprising sentiment, given that I knew what was going to happen), but I didn’t like it. It lost its nuance. First, there was an incredibly grotesque, entirely fictional scene where Churchill decides to take the subway to Westminster Station so that he can mix with the people. It’s a cheap, gimmicky device made even worse by the inclusion of the one person of color in the entire movie.

Then, all semblance of nuance disappeared, and it became a series of will-of-the-people, fight-until-the-end propaganda piece. Which, in some ways, was accurate. Churchill’s strengths were his way with words and his ability to inspire. Earlier in the film, they did touch on the difficult balancing act between looking disastrous reality in the face while also maintaining hope, which I appreciated.

I get why the movie ended the way it did. It would have been too complicated, for example, to try to explain that the Battle of Britain, while heroic and extraordinary, would likely have been futile had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. not entered the war.

I’m okay with the ending. I just didn’t like it. And I especially hated the fact that the movie ended with this inspirational “Churchill” quote:

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Here’s what the International Churchill Society has to say about this quote on a page entitled, “Quotes falsely attributed to Winston Churchill”:

We can find no attribution for either one of these and you will find that they are broadly attributed to Winston Churchill. They are found nowhere in his canon, however. An almost equal number of sources found online credit these sayings to Abraham Lincoln — but we have found none that provides any attribution in the Lincoln Archives.

Falsely sourcing quotes is a pet peeve of mine. I get why they might have created that idiotic subway scene. But why end the movie Internet meme style? It was lazy and unnecessary, and it summed up how the overall ending of this otherwise solid movie was for me.