Lately I’ve been experimenting with how I live. Prayer, fasting, lifting, waking barefoot, sun exposure, carnivore diet, black and white photos, and speaking my mind on my GoPro. It’s been the most liberating approach to life that I’ve ever experienced.
I’ve disconnected from the news, media, TV, celebrity gossip, and modern culture in general. Deleting my Instagram and removing myself from whatever is going on in the world of photography has been the best thing for my creativity. I now see sharing photos on Instagram as the modern day version of eating McDonald’s everyday. Do you want to purposely make yourself sick? The platform is like a cancer that infects everybody and makes them sick, crowdsourcing their self esteem with how many followers, comments, and likes they receive.
With a generation of fatherless men riddled with depression, anxiety, and mental health skyrocketing, it is our duty to be stronger than ever. Ultimately, we must become fearless warriors with faith and courage at the forefront.
Humor me for a moment and imagine that the world is run by the devil. Everything around you is a mere temptation to get yourself to buy things to augment your self esteem, give yourself instant pleasure, and indulging in some form of hedonism one way or another.
“The food is poison, don’t drink the water, we are all pigs in a massive slaughter.” – BONES
How to combat this? I like to start my day with a cold shower to pump myself up and put me in a state of fearlessness for whatever can be thrown at me that day. Cold showers are painful and pain is good. It’s like equipping yourself with armor first thing in the morning. Not to mention there’s some sort of health benefits with increasing your immunity or whatever, but I’m no doctor. Who is going to carry the boats after all?
Head up, shoulders back. Walk with confidence like a Spartan or warrior when you’re on the street. You start sizing everyone up and realizing most humans are hunched and glued to their cell phones. It’s good to be dominant. Walk like you mean it. Walking is the best way to combat depression. By going barefoot you’re able to improve your health from the ground up. Your feet aren’t designed for shoes. Not only will you get stronger with each step, you also start to not care what others think about you anymore. Everyone will stare at you when you walk down the street, but they realize you aren’t somebody to fuck with because of how you carry yourself. For reference I’m 6ft talk and wear 5 inch Lululemon license to train shorts and Lululemon Drysense shirts (both size medium) with Vibram five finger EL-X shoes.
I say the biggest problem men face today is the lack of spaces to simply be masculine in nature. I like to treat the streets as my place to assert dominance. I like doing pull ups on the construction site scaffolding or breaking into push ups whenever I may be and flexing my muscles in public. Walking topless during the sunset is a huge game changer for boosting confidence and also happiness through exposure to the sun. Spend as much time as you can outdoors and be in direct sunlight for as long as your body can handle it. Sun exposure seems to be one of the most critical things to consider in improving your health. Healthy people have sun kissed skin. I also believe that there’s some spiritual connection between humans and the sun. Everything on earth is connected. Treat yourself like a plant and get those vitamin D’s! I personally don’t wear any sunscreen, hats or sunglasses. When I spent time in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, I wore long sleeves and a hat that protects my neck to combat mosquitos and being out all day while I was farming, so do as you please and only you know what’s best.
So much of modern problems stems from the screen time that we spend. I grew up playing video games as a way to cope with not having a proper mentor in my life. If you think about it, we are just augmenting our lives through the act of pretending to be whatever character you are in game. Why not *become* the God of War instead of playing “God of War?” Think of yourself as the ultimate video game character and increase your stats IRL. Anything that attacks you in person that doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger.
Be the change you wish to see in the world. By simply focusing on your physical health and being more selfish, perhaps we can benefit the great community as a whole? Smile more and be nice on the street. Say hi to strangers and don’t be afraid to joke around with people. If somebody gives you shit, kill them with kindness and just make friends with them.
Addiction has plagued all humans. Whether it’s alcohol, weed, sex, phones, and sugar. Most humans are addicted. I currently abstain from any forms of alcohol, weed, sex, and only have sugar from glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice here and there. I believe we should strive for greatness and in order to do this, you must get rid of all superfluous things that most other people will view as harmless. I don’t believe in the idea that you can do everything in moderation. Would you tell that to a heroin addict? Now compare heroin to whatever thing you’re addicted to.
Would you rather be a docile donkey or a lion?
I realize that humans need at least 10-12 hours of sleep. You want to get the phone out of your bed and close your eyes as soon as early as possible. I’m usually in bed before 9PM. I eat one big meal per day of only red meat and kimchi with occasionally pork. Skip breakfast, skip lunch, and only eat right before bed. Treat food like fuel. Meat is medicine. I feel like I can conquer the world after having at least 2 pounds of beef per night. It’s also a great sleep aid. Anytime I eat food I feel exhausted afterwards, so it doesn’t make sense to eat during the day. Treat everyday like it’s Ramadan and fast until the sun sets, currently I’m fasted for over 24 hours because I’ve been in transit and don’t feel any hunger at all because of the amount of meat I consume.
When I workout I like doing farmers walk, pull ups, push ups, pistol squats, and some yoga poses. I typically do it first thing in the morning after drinking a lot of black coffee. I realize that water is more important than anything else, so I make sure to drink at least 1 liter as soon as I wake up. Strive to drink a shitload of water each day. The best perk of living in Rome is the free delicious and clean water on tap all over the city.
In terms of my photography, I’ve been adapting to a new process. The goal is to remain curious. To be in a state of play for the rest of my life until the day I die. At the end of the day I’m curious about the results. What will reality manifest to be in a photograph? The mind, body, and soul is connected. When I photograph I tap into all of my senses. Through photographing I can not only get closer to the root of the medium of photography, but also to life itself.
Street photography is an ethos and way of doing things. There’s no rules or one way to do it. You give yourself an excuse to go out and explore the world by keeping a camera in your pocket and your eyes wide open. Through photography I can extract and abstract from life and create sublime works of art. I embrace chaos and the serendipity of everyday life. I just let life flow and follow my gut.
I want to have instantaneous feedback from my photo walks. In the past, I would operate with RAW files, big cameras with lenses, hard drives, and Lightroom catalogues. This has always proven to be a sluggish and cumbersome solution to making and reviewing my photos. I’ve had issues with corrupted drives in the past and have stacks of physical drives sitting in my closet due to the huge file sizes. To top it off with the slow import speeds and the time spent waiting around in my hotel rooms in the past, I’ve given up my old ways.
I care about speed and ultimately want to stay on top of my work everyday. For instance, during my month in Mumbai, I couldn’t find any time to review my photos the same day that I made them because I would be out all day and the imports for 1000+ photos per session would take all night. This lead me to having to edit through an entire month of work for weeks on end when I returned to Philadelphia.
Since switching my process to small JPEGs with high contrast black and white, Ricoh GR, and iPad Pro, I’ve found the supreme solution to making photographs in the most streamlined way. I no longer need to worry about processing photos (which I absolutely despise.) I can come home from my sessions knowing what the camera saw is what I get. Importing everything to my iPad’s built in photo app and uploading the keepers to google photos gives me the fastest solution to editing and backing up my work. It’s all simply clicking, dragging, and dropping.
Sharing the work is another story. Currently, the trend is towards sharing work on Instagram or through some sort of social media platform whether it’s Facebook, Flickr, etc. The problem is, these are merely trends and trends don’t last forever. Starting a WordPress blog has been the greatest way I’ve found to share work. Squarespace is for suckers!
Purchase your domain using Bluehost.com
Start a blog using WordPress.org
Install Astra theme and the Jetpack Plugin
I use VideoPress and YouTube to host videos
This is the greatest way to share work as the future is websites. I don’t have to deal with censorship, internet trolls, and the gatekeepers of galleries. I am the modern gallery. I am the artist, the curator, and the gallery. My media empire.
My other passion is making videos. I believe the future of video is an interesting place because humans crave to hear and see the perspective of others. The trends on YouTube are very robotic and don’t seem to act natural on camera. To me, everyone on YouTube seems like they could be easily replaced by AI. I’ve never watched a person on YouTube that feels like they are being their true self. My goal is to break through the door like a battering ram and showcase the multifaceted experiences, thoughts, and perspective of an artist.
“Name one genius that ain’t crazy!” – Kanye West
My suggestion is to buy a GoPro mini and start filming whatever you’re doing. Make videos of your morning routines, workouts, and behind the scenes of making photos. It’s interesting to think of everything you do as a potential work of art to create, whether it’s you sharing some thoughts using audio, making a selfie with a Ricoh, making a photo or video, or just sharing some text in a blog post like this one. The possibilities are endless and what we can create is beyond anything of this earth. Join the fight club today!