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How You Can Help the Gulf Oil Spill Wildlife

Yanik — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:06:31 +0000

Everyone around the world has probably heard of the Gulf Oil Spill by now. The biggest environmental disaster of all time. Most of us feel helpless in our homes not sure what to do or how to help. I know I felt that way. Once that feeling left, the first question that popped into my mind was “How can I help?”.

After a few weeks of letting the idea mull in the back of my mind, I had an idea. I’ve been wanting to design photography related slogans and quotes for quite some time now but always shoved the idea aside by putting other projects in priority. But now I felt it was time for this project to take off because I knew that this was my small way to help. As most of you know by viewing my daily iPhone photos on Twitter or Facebook, I have a fondness for animals. And when I first saw images of the oil-soaked birds, I knew that I would focus my resources to help these poor innocent animals. So here was my plan…

1- Dust off my “photography sayings” file and start reviewing and creating new ones
2- Create a new logo that would represent my design brand (the camera)
3- Create at least 5 quality, original designs
4- Open a Zazzle store to sell my designs
5- Add my designs to cool Zazzle products

Ok… that was phase one. All and all, that took about 3 weeks of almost full time work including helpful input from fellow graphic artists and photographers. Now I had to move on to phase 2.

6- Research and choose a quality wildlife organization that was helping directly in the Gulf oil spill efforts
7- Contact the organization and see how best to go about with my fund raising plan

Phase 3… spread the word!

8- Use my contact list and social media to spread the word! (Hence this blog post).

The organization I chose to support is the National Wildlife Federation. NWF is the United States’ largest private, nonprofit conservation education and advocacy organization, with over 4 million members and supporters, and 47 state and territorial affiliated organizations. They are working actively in the Gulf to save as many animals as possible and so much more.

Now comes the part where you help out! You could go directly to their site and make a boring old donation or…. you could purchase one of my über cool original designs on Zazzle! Here’s how it works. From today until August 30, 2010, 100% of the profits made from the products you buy will be donated directly to NWF! Not only will you be making a donation to NWF but you’ll look cool as well! How great is that! Psst…. they also make great gifts!

Another way you can help is by spreading the word! So Tweet, Facebook, Blog and email it! What a great opportunity to make a difference. NWF and I thank you in advance for your help in saving the Gulf oil spill wildlife.

Here are the 5 copyrighted designs that I’ve created specifically for the launch of the store. Just click on any of the designs to be taken to my Zazzle store! The links are to the T-shirts but you can also purchase mugs, bags, hats…. go wild! I’ll be adding more designs on a regular basis so make sure you follow me on Twitter or Facebook to be kept in the loop!

Your feedback is also appreciated. Let me know which design is your favorite by voting in the poll in the sidebar! ====>

Thank you!

Shoot Play Share is also available in vertical format on apparel!

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From Theory to Creativity to Practice

Yanik — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:36:14 +0000

It’s been a looooooooooooooong time since I posted a new tutorial on YPS. 2010 has been a changing year for me both personally and professionally. I needed to refocus my photography career. Believe it or not, I was getting bored. I was loosing my passion. Yup, you read correctly. And why was that, I asked myself. I still love taking photos. I do it every day with my iPhone and I don’t get tired of it. Those of you following me on Twitter, Facebook or Flickr see them. I still like shooting for my clients. So what was the missing piece? That spark that got me going? That was my million dollar question…

And the answer came a few days later like a slap in the face. My photography career lacked creativity! I stopped pushing myself. I stopped dreaming that my images could stimulate my imagination and my emotions. That my photos could affect people’s lives. I fell into technique and laziness. Even here on Yanik’s Photo School, which was my biggest creative project in the last 2 years, I felt like I had nothing more to say to you, my fellow readers. I needed to feel my passion again to be able to share it with you.

Don’t get me wrong. I love photography and what it brings me. But I was in a professional rut. So what did I do? I put down my iPhone, I shut my computer, I blew the dust off archaic devices called a pen and paper and I started writing down my passions in life. Yes my passions. Not what gear I wanted to buy, or new skills I wanted to learn. I wrote down stuff that made me vibrate inside; that put a smile on my face. Stuff like maple syrup! Just taking the time to do this exercise was a pivotal point in my professional and personal life. Not that I had forgotten some of my passions, but I did put some deep in a cave somewhere and I discovered new ones. It was a fun and enlightening process.

Once that was done, in a new column, I wrote down new skills that I wanted to acquire or perfect. This just came in and confirmed that photography was still well and alive in me. And I also confirmed that video was going to take a bigger part of my professional life.

So now that I had those 2 columns, I simply connected the lines from one to the other to see how I could combine my passions with the skills that I wanted to enhance or learn. Very cool exercise to do! This is where my creative juices started running wild in overdrive! What creative projects could I do by combining my passions and skills? A 3 rd column started to build itself. A brainstorm of ideas and projects some way out of this world and some more simple. But what was important was the process. This process was the spark to light the flame!

The next step was to put all of these projects into perspective and prioritize them. Read each one out loud and see how they made me vibrate inside. It was all a question of feeling. That’s how I put them in priority. The ones that brought the most positive vibes went to the top of the list. After that, I decided to only choose one project and give it most of my energy. And that’s what I’m doing now. I’m focusing on this new project that’s pumping me full of energy and joy. And hopefully, within the next year I’ll be able to share this new endeavor with you.

So what about Yanik’s Photo School? It’s still alive. I just won’t be posting as often. I’ve relieved myself of the stress to post “X” number of posts per month. When I have something to share and I’ll feel pleasure in sharing it without feeling it being an obligation, I’ll be posting. That’s a promise! You guys have been a big part of the YPS flame. Your support has been and continues to be very important to me. I still love teaching you guys new stuff. At the same time I need to follow my dreams, my passions. To go where life is taking me. I know you guys understand this.

I hope you’ve learned something from this post. It’s not because your passion fails in something that you necessarily need to change that thing. Find out why the passion left, why the passion was there in the first place, and find ways to rekindle it.

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YPS Blog Downtime

Yanik — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:35:57 +0000

It had to happen at some point….. roughly 3 days ago Yanik’s Photo School got a bug. The only page you could access was the index page. All other links were corrupted.

The thing is that I was on a shoot and then went directly out of town for the weekend none the wiser. Boy was I surprised when I accessed YPS on Saturday to find out it was down! PANIC! I tried installing a backup… nothing. I tried re-posting some content…. nothing. I googled far and wide in cyber space to find any hint… nothing. I called my server to see if they had done something… nope.

It was only today that I finally found out what had happened. The htacces file had vanished. How and why is still a mystery since I hadn’t touched YPS before the event. The happy thing is that all is back in order!

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New Tutorials Coming Soon on YPS!

Yanik — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:42:44 +0000

Hello fellow photography enthusiast readers! It’s been close to two weeks since my latest post but I’m still here! I still haven’t figured out how to clone myself and the higher powers that may be have yet to increase the number of hours in a day. Lucky for me, I’m super busy with my photography business but at the same time this means a bit less time goes to Yanik’s Photo School.

For those of you wondering, YPS is still alive and kicking and I promise you new tutorials very soon. I have a couple in the works and I just have to get around finishing them up for you. I even created some cool Lightroom presets for you to download!

So hang in there and remember that patience is a virtue. The next tutorial will be coming your way before the end of the month. Scout’s honor! Until then, follow me on Twitter so that you can enjoy my daily iPhone photos as well as my RTs that feature photography learning links!

Until then, have a laugh (or a cry) by watching me make an a$$ of myself with my application to the Greatest Job in the World.

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A Month in Greece With My Nikon D300s

Yanik — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:00:54 +0000

Ahhhhh…. Greece. I still dream about its beauty. I’ve been back from my 1 month escapade for a little while now but I’ve been busy learning Adobe Premiere’s basics to put this little video up for you guys.

The lesson I have for you today is simple. Keep exploring means to develop your creativity and you’ll grow both personally and professionally. That’s what I’m doing right now with video and video editing. Like you guys stopping over here on YPS to pick up some tutorials and tips on photography, I’m hunting for the best video editing sites with my student cap on. I know that down the line, having fun with video will be great for my business but that’s not the main reason why I do it. I do it to explore new creative venues of expression.

If I look back on my life, I can go as far back to the age of 7 when I got my first musical instrument: a $10 plastic recorder. Man I loved that thing! In high school, I started writing poetry and lyrics. Then I tried my hands at oil painting throughout university. After that it was a guitar. And then photography, never thinking for 1 second when I purchased my Nikon Coolpix 4500 that it would define my professional life and, to a certain degree, my personal life.

You never know where your creativity will take you! So open that box and take that first step out of it!

You can see that I pulled all the stops in this montage. From video to stop motion to HDR stills. I really had fun doing all of this in Greece.

I hope you enjoy it! And if you missed my iPhone photo montage of Greece, you can check it out here.

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