Book Review – The Secret Letters of the Monk Who sold his Ferrari

The best Deepavali gift I got from the Manchester Library is the book “The Secret Letters of the Monk Who sold his Ferrari” by Robin sharma.

After many years I am reading a Full Physical Non Technical Book.

After reading the book “Unplugged – how to live mindfully in a digital world”, I started to live a unplugged life.
Turning off the Mobile data connection and wifi most of the time is the immediate effect of this book.
Will write about in detail after giving a second read of it.

Then, I started to read on the Secret Letters.

Jonathan is a busy workaholic man, who is missing the happiness of family, friends and human relationship, like most of us or like me.

He was requested to travel to many part of the world in a short period of time, to collect small talismans.
This travel, the people he meet, their life ethics, the letters he get with talismans makes him and myself think a lot about the life.

• Live an authentic life – Do what you like truely
• Make small incremental improvements daily
• Find the great happiness in simple pleasures
• Conquer the fears
• Live with kindness
• Do lead a best life, do all small works in your full heart, do them at your best
• Choose encouraging friends
• The purpose of life is to Love
• Stand for something bigger than yourself

These are the core learnings from this book.

Yes. I know all these statements already from many of our stories from schooldays.
But reading them all again with a good story, made me to redefine my life ethics once again.

I can fit into the shoes of the Jonathan, and felt like travelling and learning these stuff myself, instead of him.

Will practise the following things from now to begin a better living.

1. do all small works in your full heart, do them at your best
2. Make small incremental improvements daily
3. Find the great happiness in simple pleasures

Will do the remaining once these 3 are become a part of me.

I recommend this book to all of you to read.

Really, it gives immense pleasure to read a good book, for hours.
I dont know why I feel frustrated, after few hours of skimming over the never ending timelines on facebook and twitter.
But losing myself with this book for two full days, is a great pleasure.
I feel that I have reinvented my love on the books, once again, which I lost after I became a slave of Internet.

Decided to be unplugged most of the times.
Now, feeling better.

Though I am a Kindle Fan, reading a real book gives much pleasure.

(Wrote on our east road, longsight, Manchester home, at early morning 3.00 AM, after reading the book with great happiness. It was happened years ago to read a book day and night with all the time get.)

Book Review – Eugene Richards (55) – Good photos of a Photographer

My favourite Photographer, Eric Kim  always says as “Buy books, Not Gears”.

Eric Kim

I dont have any interest on photography books, before reading has articles. I thought all of the good photos are available on internet and it is enough to view them.

But, Eric says that the photos available as books wont be there online. We can not hear the stories of photos, when we see them online as there is big stream of photos available in the queue. Its true. When we see the photos on flickr facebook, instragram, we give only few seconds for the photos, give like or goto next. We dont have time to hear that the photos speak something.

Eric says to buy books to hear the photos and learn to see the photos. I wanted to try few books before buying. Fortunately, Nottoingham City Library is having good collection on photography books. Today took 7 books of them. Let us see, how the books taste different.

The very first book I explored is “Eugene Richards (55)”

Phaidon Press is releasing small size books with 55 best photos of good photographers, with narration on each photos along with the biography of the photographer.

This book explores the photos of Eugene Richards.

Eugene Richards

The photos are in Black and white with small narration. The photos speak themself and the narration adds more voice to them. War, child birth, family, sad, death, hospital, gun and more. They are being as a snapshot of that moment.

I took more time to goto next photo as the book has only 55 photos. Each photo has some history and brings that time on front of our eyes.

I realise that we dont need great camera to create good photography. I learn to see, explore and enjoy the photographs.

I am not sure such photo books are available in Chennai libraries. Before I come back to chennai in next Feb, I will try to explore all the photo books in Nottingham Library.

Thanks Eric for introducing the powers of photo books and Nottingham Library for having loads of Photography books.

Book Review – Zen in the Art of Street Photography – Free Ebook – A must read for all Photographers

This is the very first ebook on Photography, which I enjoyed reading.

Eric Kim speaks in the book, as a friend.

Street Photography is the topic Eric writes on this. But, Instead of talking about the technical details on choosing the camera, it various settings, post processing etc, he talks about the lifestyle of a photographer.

Every photographer wants to get more fame. We constantly upload our works on social media, flickr, 500px, etc. We are looking for likes and comments from people. We want this more and more. When we get less comments, likes we go sad. We feel bad. We compare with other photographers follower count.

We always want to upgrade our gear. Bigger DSLR, More and more lenses, More new model cameras. We never satisfy with our current cameras.

Do you feel the same ever? This book is the answer for you.

I learnt the following from this book.

1. If we can not satisfied with our current camera, no camera in the world will satisfy us.
2. Spend money on getting books, travel, experiences, workshops instead of buying camera items.
3. Stick with one camera, one lens always.
4. Dont upload all the photos you shoot, Kill your products yourself. Show only your best photos to the world.
5. Dont think on comments, likes, followers count. People will be flying always. You can not be a hero forever.
6. Shoot for yourself. Enjoy the process of walking on roads, shooting, post processing.
7. Have few friends, who care on you and give real critic comments.
8. Be grateful whatever you have. All you have are, still a big dream for someone.
9. Keep on learning. Failures are common.
10. Practise Daily. Have your camera always. Be prepared to shoot the great moments.
11. Be very slow on uploading photos. No need to upload all you shoot everyday. Take one week or more time to process them and upload really good photos only.
12. Know your camera well. Read it manual. Your small Point and Shoot camera can create magics.
13. Learn from good photographers. Follow them, read them.
14. Practising Zen and Taoism can change your entire lifestyle.
15. People wont remember you for the millions of photos you upload. One good photo for a month, one good photo for a year, one good photo for your lifetime is enough for people to remember you.
16. Work on Projects instead of random photo shooting.

This is a free Ebook. Get your copy from http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2015/06/10/free-e-book-zen-in-the-art-of-street-photography/

All of the content in this book is “open source”— meaning you can edit, translate, remix, or distribute it openly and freely however you would like.

I recommend this book to all the photographers. This will change the way we see the world.

Thanks Eric for sharing all your experiences with the world for free. Your site is a nice gift for all the photographers.

About Eric:

Eric is very good at writing. Follow his website and read all other articles. He lst his job and then found his interest in street photography. Now, he makes life with the street photography, workshops etc.