YANphotography, Provo, UT (2026)

10/16/2026

Once upon a time, my pal Summer Murdock sent myself and Allison Jolley a link to a music festival with a location (Arcosanti 1970's arcology everything 🌀) and a talent line up I LEGITIMATELY COULD NOT BELIEVE.

Said lineup included my top two favorite living musicians in one weekend (adrianne lenker + mrcameron_winter of Geese) , plus many more I'd been scoping (STALKING) from afar. The verdict? ABSO-friggen-how could i not-LUTELY.

So i told myself my ticket was a bday gift (Oct 25, cough-cough) and spent some money i arguably did not have...

What i wanna tell you about FORM 2026, which had to unexpectedly cancel day three due to rain and wind and mud is - WORTH EVERY PENNY AND MORE.

Beyond the musical magic, at one point, I was walking around the stunning Arcosanti grounds, lost per usual and asked the only other human i could see to help me find the cafe. He was chatting kindly to me and walking me to said cafe when i noticed his lanyard. So i said,

"Oh, what's your role at this festival?"

And he said,

"I actually founded it 12 years ago." 😮

Turns out, THE .tet was taking the time to personally show me the way to the Arcosanti cafe.

Before you think that means I'm cool (i am not), you should know that's just the level of presence, care, intimacy, and connection all throughout the event.

I wept, i saw bells, i threw up, approached strangers with cool shoes, danced,made friends with the only baby i saw + her mama, pretended Cameron winter was making eye contact directly with my friends and me, was healed by the drum song sounds of Taran Ailey, sat in the rain to hear 𝕬𝖓𝖓𝖆𝖍𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖘𝖎𝖆™, was transcended for the first time as a group by kamasi washington and MORE.

To be honest, i had to discipline myself to pull out my phone. So forgive me if the captures here don't quite do it all justice. I just gotta say thanks to such intricate, true and heart centered beauty. It was a rare and thoughtful desert gift in an increasingly mindless, metric driven yet still stunning world.

Thank you FORM team, thank you to the artists, thank you to Arcosanti and the land. I hope to come back again and again.

10/09/2026

Once an odd, wise woman and friend (but the kind you're almost never in touch with), named Sara called me "Opposite Day." I'd spent the whole day mentoring her and about a year later she confessed,

"I didn't understand a single word you said that day. But about a year later, it suddenly all made sense."

It can be that way. Change happening over night, except it's not over night. It's been growing in the dark soil for months and months, slowly turning in the earth, steadily making its way toward the light. And then one morning, what seems a revelation; the earth splits. The green shoots. Hardly anyone notices, or saw it coming exactly--but all is different. Turned over and upside down until it's aimed right. New and old at once. Finally fresh and a little bit better.

That may be a good image to hold onto right now for this world.

What you see here is one of my favorite photos ever taken of me by the talented and steadily luminous Kelli Rad. She took it over multiple screens, thru FaceTime, can you believe that?

Can you further believe I read a poet as ancient and great as Rumi each morning, and probably not even the best translation, also thru a screen because I keep him on my phone as I need him with me wherever I go?

That now, I also I read him to my 16 year old son, Shiloh in the mornings too, before he wakes up? While our dog Tuesday licks the salty sleep off Shiloh's arms? Shiloh can probably only feel Tuesday and I thru his half dreams, but I like to think it's getting into the soil, turning him over, nourishing him until he's ready to break ground.

Sigh. My boy. Gentle like Rumi writes here. A gentle I'm determined to help preserve and cultivate as the kind of man who makes us all proud. We need more of those, right? Shy but not. Gentle but strong at once.

Magic.

(another sigh)

I've learned a lotta tricks, from whoever would teach me- I've also taught many of them to myself. Albeit a little more aggressively at times than I intended. But despite all appearances, I'm shy (and not shy) to my core. I am an excited, upside down mountain.

May every night bird start singing.

Thanks for the zillionth time, Rumi,

Opposite Day

10/06/2026

Not me thinking I was going to send out 2027 photo session travel dates and locations out on Sunday, then deciding I desperately needed to update my website first.

I was still trying to decide if summer was truly over, when it occurred to me that fall was zooming by. Suddenly, we find ourselves in deliciously mystical, sometimes moody, and often humorous tree vibes. Clearly demo'd here by my delightful photo collaborator, client and friend, the endlessly creative Maryam | Oakland Family Photographer (and fam).

I've spent nearly every weekend since Aug in a different city with both my camera and heart cracked wide open by all the things. Especially the bursting, dark horse beauty of the people I'm lucky to photograph.

The good news is that Autumn is practically designed for FEELING and HEALING BB - even if you don't proudly consider yourself to be emotionally sl*tyy, like I do. Either that or RAGING AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT in every bright color, just like the leaves do. 🍃🍂🍁🪾

The bad news, (which I will promptly follow with some more good news since there has been SO MUCH BAD lately), is that my photo prices are going up in 2027. In THIS economy? 😩 Yeahhh, don't we all know the pain?!

So the other good news is that you can still get my 2026 photo prices if you act fast. I'm sending my dates and location to my waiting list first. If you wanna grab a spot when it's hot off the press, dm or comment me your email pronto, pretty please.

If not, I still encourage you ALL to leave your fav line of poetry in the comments. Did I mention it's my birthday month? That means I shamelessly ask for poetry, jokes, and compliments all the way until Oct 31st.

*photos on film by me taken in the Bay Area. Scanned and developed by pals at Indie Film Lab

09/24/2026

Walk and Talks with Yanzee. Topics include: HLP, yarn, 2027 photo sessions, robots, space and time, YAHTZEE, keeping it s*xy for the algorithm, nobody knows and lastly - minivan safety.

Come back soon to see what's in it for you.

08/19/2026

BEHOLD: some of the film photos I co created with my clients last month. Scanned and developed by Indie Film Lab

Sometimes I've got more words than I know what to do with.

Other times I've got none.

Suffice to say, July was the best lucid dream I've ever had. Each encounter felt fated. Each person I got to create with was a teacher and friend. No one knows just when or how the muse decides to speak- I'm just damn grateful -- (and frankly a little fumbly with my camera cuz she's loud and she means business)-- when she does.

Never hurts to be assisted by soul, earth and summer sun.

I also felt I should remind the photographers who I'm trying to nudge to purchase my original TEETHKISS content (on sale for just a little while longer!) that I do in fact, still make photos. Grab TEETHKISS if you're ready to make your photos match your guts. It's worth it.

Link in bio.

08/11/2026

(TEETHKISS IS ON SALE THRU AUG 22 link in bio)

Both these things are true:

1. I started my photography business to make money in order to survive.

2. It's never been about the money for me.

Can you feel me? Like either a visionary or a total fool, I've always shot my shot aiming for the biggest, truest, most radical things I know; truth, beauty, liberation, alignment. 🕸️. Trying to find my own and help others find their singular note in the song bigger than all of us so we can sing together.

I know what it's like to be hungry and "hustling." Because that's been me most of my life. Growing up one of ten kids. Putting myself through college. As a married "breadwinner." As a divorced single parent (15 years). As a neurodivergent, wild woman, entrepreneur trying to stay afloat and support her children in a system that rewards conformity, self hate, deception, greed, domination and keeps us all disempowered and sick.

I also know what it's like to draw a line inside that says NO. My art will not be about survival alone.

Nor will it belong to my ambition. (Which used to be tremendous, believe me. No shame if that's your game- i just played that game to the place I felt let me keep my soul, then I had to dip)

Nor will my art be about getting validation or giving others what they want from me.

Nor will I let whatever this inner flame in me is that allows me to create ever be bought, sold or owned.

If that weren't true, I would have partnered with Amazon or the dozen other influencer platform pitch whatever--thingamajigs (i never read them that close) i get a week try to hook me with.

I've done my best to do and teach this: Use your hunger as the flame that gives you courage to act. But make the art-- make all you do -- about something bigger. Something that is both SINGULARLY you and greater than you could ever imagine.

This has both confused and pi**ed a lotta people off. They need me to be one or the other. They need me to draw a line. They need me to fit in a box they recognize. They need me to MAKE SENSE. I say NO-- then smile sadly (and cry cuz my feelings get hurt pretty easily) while throwing rainbow confetti as i moonwalk away....

08/11/2026

Ohhhh...not much, just a little something on witness, beauty, truth, going broke, liberation, madness, listening, the refusal of any box, why I shaved my head and what I've been up to the last several years. 😅

I'm not really great at narrowing things down to a tidy internet post....or anything really. 🙃

Last week, I posted this in my IG stories. So many of you resonated in that human, cathartic, unifying sorta way, I figured this post deserved a permanent place in my grid.

It just took me over one morning, and I couldn't stop writing. I googled who first said "the truth shall set you free," and google's auto ai response said Jesus. 🤣 is that true? Listen, I love Jesus as much as any ex- Mormon, misfit, mountain mystic might-- but is that true???

I hope so. I also hope this text isn't too tiny?? My eyes are getting OLD.

To getting old. To liberation. To beauty. To truth. To living fully alive rather than half or mostly dead.

Sincerely,

the yanagement

07/31/2026

Well, July has been a trip. More like one trip after another. More like jewel-lie, Yanada in Canada, I live and work in my bathing suit now, what is love, baby don't hurt me, sacred sites and ritual rights and infinite spirals, and Seattle sweet peas bundles like lovers or friends or anam caras, plus q***r public discos and birthday parties, rivers, tears, trampoline and DANCING, omg it's alll juuust dancing, plus create create create----wait (dont wait, create)-- you didn't think if you kept reading this it was going to turn into an actual sentence, did you???

"If you don't know, act like you know."

I'm done making sense. I'm here to make you feel and live wholly alive rather than waste your life feeling mostly dead. Spoiler alert, anyone can do that because it actually doesn't even cost MONEY. Just pride.

Also, I'm running a sale on TEETHKISS the original content for all of Leo season. $444 bucks babies. Marked down from $1200. The link is in my bio-- or will be by morning.

TEETHKISS is an online workshop for photographers looking to make meaningful work with all their guts. You can do it all by your damn self with lots of videos of me talkin and takin pictures. Basically it's me yansplaining and trying to tell you everything I learned from living thru a lotta pain and traveling the country teaching artists and taking pictures. If you buy it, you might just find your soul or your artistic voice or your freedom.

True love decides.

And did I mention I'm never teaching TEETHKISS THE CLASS ever, ever, EVER again? If not, I tell you about it in my IG stories. Unless you see this post after my IG stories disappear into the void. Then you may just never know... (I'll put it on my substack and probably make a reel. Calm down. But I should warn you, the content is rated PG-13 for extreme spittle build up)

That's it folks. Thanks for being here. Thanks for witnessing, communing and rodeoclowning with me all these years. 💋

06/17/2026

Sometimes I don't know how to say what I feel. Then I look up at the sky and think - that. That's exactly how I feel.

All photos here by wonder-kids Summer Murdock and Ryan Muirhead...except one. Lucky me.

*photographed on the traditional territories of the Paiute and Ute nations.

06/10/2026

Tell yo' kids! Tell yo' wife! Yan is coming to town. 🤠📸

Ever wanted to make photos together? Swipe right to see my current travel locations.

Utah folks, email me for local rates.

Ready to book?
Follow the link in my bio.
Not ready but almost?
I got you.
Email me your questions.

YANphotography

10/16/2026

10/09/2026

10/06/2026

09/24/2026

08/19/2026

08/11/2026

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07/31/2026

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