photo by Chellise Busse
Since the very moment I started my career as an artist and professional photographer, I’ve asked myself two questions:
How can I do this in a completely unique way?
How can I do this in a completely unique way that is ALSO absolutely authentic to who I am?
Spoiler alert: the answer is in the question. If you truly do things completely authentic to your own skill set, those things will be completely unique. Because, joke about it if you must, but each of us actually ARE special snowflakes. The trick is gracefully maintaining one’s own crystalline shape.
“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
― E.E. Cummings
This sentiment has been the mountain I built my life and my work on.
For better or worse, that got people’s attention. That had folks coming to my door and asking to learn from me. Ironic, because I couldn’t give them what I was - I could only ever help them get better at being themselves.
I became a teacher - arguably before I had any business as one. Early on, a workshop of mine, the Yan Fam Way in which I taught people how to photograph families and couples authentically, was instantly popular and took me all over the United States. Then beyond.
I loved working intimately with so many creatives, but I couldn’t keep up with it. The thing that made my workshop unique was that I spent hours and hours taking the time to personally pour through, review and write paragraphs of response to the photo work of each person who attended. I wanted to reflect back to them their own uniqueness in order to build their confidence and help draw more of it out. Such in depth personalization did indeed make the workshop special, but it took a toll on me.
One day during my yoga practice, a lightning bolt of an idea struck me: I could take everything I’d been teaching and turn it into an online course! Mind you, this was long before online education courses were a dime a dozen in our inbox.
(As an aside I feel like I’m 80 years old in a rocking chair, talking about the good old days through flapping gums as my false teeth sit next to me on my wooden porch).
The course would help anyone who took it once and for all learn how to match their outsides to their insides, or in other words, it would help them make the photographic work only they could make.
I called that online workshop, TEETHKISS. And that’s when people really went bananas. 🍌
read about teethkiss the class
Within TEETHKISS’S pages and recorded videos, I tried to pack not just everything that I put into the Yan Fam Way, but also everything I’d learned in my career up to that point. I didn’t know how to put out an offer without giving it my literal EVERYTHING. Again, people responded. TEETHKISS grossed six figures within months of its release
But my metric for success was never a bottom line or popularity. It was whether or not I had done whatever it was I was doing with my whole heart. I had done that with TEETHKISS. For that reason, I was proud.
After that, I thought I was through with teaching. But life had other plans. Turns out TEETHKISS required further instruction. People wanted help and community navigating the material, which was ABUNDANT and LIFE ALTERING.
That’s when I turned TK into a month long, online class with using the workbook from the original TK as a course manual. But just like everything else I’d done up to that point, I KNEW I couldn’t do it like any other class. I racked my brain for how to make it totally UNIQUE from any other class I’d heard about.
I asked myself what I would want to see in a class. What would be interesting to me other than an hour long lesson from the teacher every week?
The answer came immediately. I would want to watch what the course promised: the transformation of an artists. I would want to truly observe other artists as they went through it. I would want to see the nitty gritty, in depth, uncomfortable process that is an artist doing the inner work necessary for them to locate their truth and their talent. I would want to witness them figure out a plan for extracting that truth + talent from their abstract depths and the attempt to put it into something as tangible and cohesive as a photography style.
Why? Because everyone talks about or wants that. But NO ONE SHOWS JUST QUITE HOW ITS DONE.
No one specifically shows how their dream, their story and their preferences mysteriously merge into a signature photographic style that becomes recognizable. And not only becomes recognizable - but that others grow to love and desire.
That’s when I came up with the concept of the Fab Four being part of TEETHKISS the class. I would find four brave students who would pay extra to go deep with me into this process. Every week. For four weeks. In front of the whole class.
I hoped this would be:
Vulnerable. Raw. Human. Miraculous.
But I had no idea if I could pull it off. So for that first round, six years ago, I said a Hail Mary. And we were off.
I’m so glad I took that risk. Because without fail, the Fab Four aspect of TEETHKISS the class has been most students’ favorite part. Again and again, students would tell me how they saw themselves in each fab four. How inspiring it was. How much it encouraged them to also be brave in forming and sharing their authentic voice.
Not only did it benefit the students who got to watch the Fab Four students, but the experience of being in the hot seat was a deep initiation of sorts for each Fab Four participant. Because they could no longer keep their creative dreams to themselves. They’d admitted them out loud in front of everyone, put money on the table, trusted a guide (me), and had an entire class holding them accountable.
My friends - time and again - magic happened.
find out about being a Fab Four next round
As I prepare for Teethkiss the class 2026 (Jan 12 - Feb 8 2026), I’m looking for who those fab four might be. Who will be brave this time? Who is ready to finally invest in themselves? Who needs the guidance of an old rodeo clown like me, and a gritty class of the kind of pure hearted artists work like this tends to attract, to cheer them on?
Right now, the Fab Four spaces are on sale for $1299. Does it call to you?
Is one of those seats meant to be yours?
I’ve opened early registration for TEETHKISS. You can see descriptions for the kind of seats offered below. There are four fab four seats, and 12 seats for live students. Even tho we don’t start for months, live seats are starting to fill up. Grab yours at the early bird price while there is still a seat to grab by clicking this link: SIGN ME UP FOR A LIVE SEAT
•(I KNOW A LOT OF YOU LIKE TO TAKE TEETHKISS MORE THAN ONCE! IF YOU HAVE TAKEN TEETHKISS IN THE PAST, I HAVE A SPECIAL VERY DISCOUNTED SILENT SEAT COMING YOUR WAY. SO HOLD OFF ON SIGNING UP JUST TO BE PART OF THE COMMUNITY)•
So now that, I’ve told you all about how Teethkiss the class came to be, there is one more thing I want to tell you.
Its just that I am stuck on one question: the same question I always ask myself with anything I do.
How can I make this run of TEETHKISS THE CLASS completely unique?
How can I make it true myself, true to the time we are living in– true to who I am during this time?
I’d love to hear your suggestions.
So far, I’m wanting to invest more in the feeling of community in the class. I want to add more instruction time. I want to bring in guest instructors. I want Teethkiss in 2026 to feel like a shore that the creative mermaids of the world (that’s you) can rest on for a few moments before returning to spread their other worldly magic in this big sea. I know the world is wilder than it’s ever been as she is on the brink of total transformation. I know many of us are weary. And many of us are excited.
It just so happens that I, dear potential, mermaid student, happen to be somewhat of an export on transformation. I want to use the four weeks I will have with teethkiss students to remind each one of their unique power, unique creative force, and how that force gives to the world in ways that is beyond our understanding, though it is perhaps our most potent medicine.
So if any of that sounds good to you. If you’re needing a place of fefueling and remembering. If you’re wanting friends to remember with. If you’re looking at your January and February weeks and thinking that may just be the perfect time to cozy up by a warm fire (my heart. Oh dear, how I love to mix metaphors) and bask in truth, beauty, poetry and the human spirit, Teethkiss may be the place for you. I’d love to welcome you.
(Read about each way to enroll in teekhkiss here)
photo by Chellise Busse
Xx,
Yan