Yanik’s Photo School went live on April 5th of this year. Actually, it was called Yanik’s Photo Blog then and I wasn’t really sure where I would be going with it. It didn’t take long for me to change the name and focus the site on photography learning. Looking back, I’m glad I chose this area of photography since I combined two passions: photography and teaching.

I’m also very excited for 2009! I’ m in the process of moving to Montreal (hopefully in April) which will give me access to 2 professional studios which means more tutorials on a subject close to me: lighting! I’ll also have a video camera to show you detailed Continue Reading »

Welcome to my latest guest post on DIYPhotography.net!

This is the last in this DIYP series…. for now. 2009 is starting with a bang with 2 back to back book shoots what will keep me out of trouble until the end of March. So just maintaining YPS will be a challenge in itself.

If you missed the first 3 parts of my “Exploring Small Strobes” series, you can check them out:

Exploring Smal Strobes - Why Should I Use a Speedlight?
Exploring Small Strobes: Why Use Speedlights Off Camera
Exploring Small Strobes - Wireless Triggers

In part 4, I look at some of Continue Reading »

It’s been a while since my last Lightroom tutorial so I thought I’d throw one in since I’m using it so much, not to mention that many of you asked for more, more, more Lightroom tuts!

In this tutorial, I’ll be moving away from the the Develop Module and going into the Web Module. I’ll be showing you how to create a Web photo gallery in Lightroom. It’s quick, easy, Continue Reading »

Has this ever happened to you? You bring your digital images to the print lab and ask for 5 x 7 prints and when you compare them to you original photo files, you have parts cropped out? Now why is that? Did the lab screw up?

Basically, the aspect ratio of your original image isn’t the same as the aspect ratio of the print. Ok, before I go any further, let me explain “aspect ratio”. Aspect ratio is a measurement of the proportion of your image. The largest side divided by the smallest side of your image will give you Continue Reading »

As you guys may already know, I’m a big fan of David Hobby and his Strobist Website. Which makes me a big fan of off camera lighting with small strobes. Which makes me want to share what I learn with you. So much so that I’ve already written quite a few posts on the subject, not to mention that I’m currently doing a compete series on them on DIYPhotography.net.

But today I want to get down to the basics with Continue Reading »

I’ve been asked by quite a few of you on how to soften skin in Photoshop. So I thought that I’d show you the steps I use to soften skin. Contrary to what many photographers use which is the Gaussian Blur filter, I prefer to use the Surface Blur filter.

I actually show both techniques in this photography tutorial so that you can try both and see the results side by Continue Reading »

It’s time for another “steps” photography tutorial. This one is a bit special though. A few weeks ago I decided you give you guys an assignment, the first ever here on Yanik’s Photo School: give me 1 tip for great family portraits. 4 of you responded and I’ve included your great tips bellow.  Not a bad response number considering that most people never post comments.

Of course, I’ve expanded on the steps just a bit. So let’s get right to it, shall we….

Step 1 - Greet everyone. Don’t forget to greet every single person that will be in the shoot, even the children. You need to create a rapport will all of them. Children are often forgotten and they do feel left out. Of course this will affect Continue Reading »

It’s time for another Photoshop video tutorial “quicky”.

In this simple but effective photography tutorial, I’ll show you how to increase the power of the emotions conveyed in your images by adding a simple filter already in Photoshop. Of course, this technique works best to accentuate emotions of love, romance and friendship. We’re actually giving our images a warm, fuzzy feeling… fuzzy being the Continue Reading »

I just finished part 3  of my “Exploring Small Strobes” series that I’m currently doing over at DIYPhotography.net entitled “Wireless Triggers”. This article is all about the pros and cons of the different off camera wireless triggers out there, more specifically radio triggers like the famous Pocket Wizards or the mid-range Skyports.

If you missed the first 2 articles of the series, you can catch up with part 1 here and part 2 here. In part 1, I looked at why use small strobes and in part 2 I covered the reasons why to use your Continue Reading »

I would like to start off by apologizing to my non Nikon readers. This video tutorial is all about the Nikon CLS so…. you can bench this one. Or have a look at it and just maybe it’ll convince you that Nikon has the most sophisticated lighting system out there and you’ll rush out to sell all your non Nikon gear on Ebay!

In this video, I’ll be going through the complete steps for you to set up your camera’s built-in flash to act as a master (commander) as well as your SB-800 (or SB-600) to act as a slave. I’m doing the steps on my D300 body but the menus are similar from one Nikon model to another.

This Nikon CLS tutorial falls in wonderfully with my “Exploring Small Strobes” series that Continue Reading »