Photo by shalamov

Gingerbread Christmas decorations are fun to make, beautiful to look at, and a joy to eat! Today I’m having my friends over, we’re going to make a gingerbread house and some hearts to hang in the windows. It’s a bit early, but I want to have some decoration ready since it’s the first sunday of advent tomorrow. In Norway the first sunday of advent marks the beginning of “Christmas preparation time”, what’s the tradition in your country, or in your family?

Linda

Photo by Ruth Black

At YAY we subscribe on a numer of magazine, one of them is Entrepreneur Magazine. This issue they focused on apps for mobile phones: What apps should you have, and what apps should you develop for your business? We are working on a couple of small apps here at YAY for our photographers and customers, and we’ve been trying to figure out what would be a great app for stock photo buyers. It’s a challenging process, as you have to make something good enough to get noticed by the masses. But I’m sure we’ll get there –  there’s a lot of creative thinking at YAY, and we have many creative people around us as well!

Entrepreneur gave a list of great apps for your smart phone. For personal use, my favorite apps are:

Spotify – let you stream music, legal and almost free! Not available in the U.S.
Shazam – I love music, and with Shazam I know what music is playing.
Pzizz – when working long hours power napping and a good night sleep is important. Pzizz is great for calming down a busy mind!
Shopper – a simple solution to a simple problem: organizing the shopping.

Also, I love the map with GPS – I used to get lost all the time, now I don’t

It’s always fun with new apps, so if you have any recommendations I’d love to hear them!

Linda

Photo by leaf.

I simply love the Abstract City blog from artist Christoffer Niemann! In the latest post he gives us some amusing illustrations of everyday events and everyday science – read the post here. You should also take a look at the older posts!

Linda

Illustration by cienpies

We at stock photo agency YayMicro would like all of you to enjoy our breathtaking images! Therefore we are giving away a free screensaver, with 100 images!

With our screensaver you’ll get new season images automatically! We’ll update the images after the season, so you’ll get Christmas images for Christmas, spring images when it’s spring, summer images when it’s summer, and fall images at autumn! Mostly you’ll get beautiful nature images.

Click here to get a Free Stock Photo Screensaver for Mac and PC!

Get a Free Stock Photo Screensaver for PC and Mac - Season Nature Images

We’ve finally added a blogroll to YAYblog! We know that many of our photographers, visitors and customers got their own blogs, and we’d love to be updated on what you’re writing about.

So if you think your blog could be of interest for us at YAY, please send us an e-mail. We’ll take a look, and if it’s a good match we’ll add it to our blogroll! Interesting themes would be anything related to photography, illustrations, design, photoshop, web design, media in general, microstock and the stock photo industry, etc.

You can e-mail us at: post@yaymicro.com

Linda, Jan & Bjorn

Jonathan Klein from Getty Images gives a great presentation about the potential impact and power of photography in this newly released TED talk.

Linda

From ted.com: “Photographs do more than document history — they make it. At TED University, Jonathan Klein of Getty Images shows some of the most iconic, and talks about what happens when a generation sees an image so powerful it can’t look away — or back.”

I highly recommen all of you to watch this TED talk by David Griffin!
“The photo director for National Geographic, David Griffin knows the power of photography to connect us to our world. In a talk filled with glorious images, he talks about how we all use photos to tell our stories.”

Linda

One day, when I was searching our images, I had to do a search for “Yawn”. And wow, did I yawn! This gave me the idea to make a video with images of people sleeping and yawning – to demostrate how difficult it is to not yawn when you see other people yawning. It’s one of the first videos I’ve ever made, but even if it’s not perfect I’m sure it will make you YAAAWWWNNN!

How many times did you yawn? Or are you one of those super-humans who manage to not yawn? Tell me in a comment! I yawn many times, every time..

So, why is yawning contagious, and why do we do it? There is still no one answer for this, but you can read about the proposed reasons in Wikipedia.

Another good way to use this video is  if you have trouble relaxing or getting sleepy. Try to involve yourself in the images, feeling the relaxation the sleeping people and animals are experiencing, and hopefully you’ll feel more relaxed and sleepy afterwards!

The music is Lent Et Douloureux – Gymnopédie II by Satie.

All images and photos comes from our talented photograpers!

Linda:)

YAY

You might think it takes a lot to get inspired or motivated – and sometimes it does. But motivation can also come easy – if you are exposed to the right triggers. I always thought I didn’t get motivated by “mooshy motivation videos and quotes”. But, after making a video with some of the quotes I find most motivating, I must admit it really works. Whenever I lack motivation, I can watch this video and feel the motivation return.

And of course, all the images in the video is from our amazingly talented photographers!

Do you have a quote or saying that motivates or inspires you? I would love it if you shared your favorite quote with me!

If I have more time, I like to watch a TED-talk. (You can read more about Ted-talks here.)The people speaking are always motivated, no matter what they speak about. It’s impossible to stay untouched by their enthusiasm!

Linda

YAY

I’ve always liked to match my iMac’s background image to the season. I’ve chosen some of my favorite Christmas Wallpaper Images as a “before Christmas” gift to you who read our blog. If there are some variations or themes you feel are missing – show me an example of what you like in the comments, and maybe we’ll add a few more photos/illustrations

Please enjoy our Free Christmas Wallpapers – and if you like the images, take a look at the photographers portfolio. You’re guaranteed to find several more favorites!

Silver Snow Flake by: Sandralise

Cartoon Christmas Tree by: clairev

….you’ll get more wallpapers here!

L:)