Mike Moats: I am a full time pro macro nature photographers and live in Southeast Michigan, USA. I started with used equipment purchased off of ebay back in 2001, and it became a full time business by 2006. I have had my images and article published in many of the photo magazines, and my images have won local and international awards in contests. I am sponsored by Tamron and a member of the Tamron Image Masters group.

Times of Youth: What does photography mean to Mike Moats? 

Well it means being able to pay my bills, but more importantly it gets me outdoors where I love to be.

Times of Youth: Who are your favorite classic photographers, and how did they influence your career path?  

When I decided I wanted to take up photography in 2001, I went to the local bookstore and checked out the photo books.  I saw a book by John Shaw on nature photography and one by Art Wolfe, and those were the photographers that inspired

Times of Youth: As a macro photographer, which aspect is the most important to capture images creatively?

I’m always trying to come up with a different view, or framing of a subject, something that is different from what everyone is doing.  I’m always searching for subjects that are not being shot by everyone else.  To many macro photographers only shoot flowers and bugs, and forget there are many other great subjects to shoot.

Times of Youth: Nature, doubtlessly, intrigues. What is it about nature that lures you the most? 

Would you consider choosing human subjects for your macro photography in future? Mother nature creates amazing subjects that are all different and unique in their styles, shapes, contrast, textures, colors.  Photographing humans are of no interest to me, but who knows someday I may change my mind.

Times of Youth: Are there any special scenic geographical locations that you prefer to shoot at? 

Since I don’t shoot landscapes, scenics are not my objective, but I do like to refer to my macro photography as tiny landscapes. The type of environments I like to shoot my macro photography in would be wooded areas and areas with water, like ponds and swamps.

Times of Youth: Besides being a nature macro specialist, are there any other areas of photography that interest you? 

I started out as a landscape photographers but after three years I realized my passion was in macro photography, so I dedicate all my time to macro, and never shoot any other styles of photography, and no other styles of photography interests me.

Times of Youth: Your work has intrigued many people and filled their lives with beauty. Your comments?  

I love to share my work and am very honored when I have people that would like to purchase my work to hang in their homes. It’s always fun when you show people intimate details from nature that they have never seen before, and watch them get excited.

Times of Youth: Of all the places you’ve been to for your photography expeditions and workshops, which has been the most memorable? 

The local parks where I live hold the best memories, because most of my best images come from those parks.  I can remember each image I’ve shot at those parks, and exactly where in those parks I shot them.

Times of Youth: What is your idea of a perfect picture?  

I created what I call a two subject composition which has been the images that have won all my awards in contests or have been my best seller to the public.  It’s a simple concept of having an interesting main subject on top of an interesting background subject.  I shoot  with both subjects in full focus. Very simple composition that works very well.

Times of Youth: Tell us about your books, especially ‘Tiny Landscapes’. What do your books offer and what has been their consequent impact on the audiences? 

The Tiny Landscapes book shows many of the different types of subjects there are to shoot in nature and also some insight into the environment where I found the subject, some info on my composition, and what f/stop I chose for depth of field. I also have an e-book called, Creating Art With Macro, and that is more on the how-to teaching about macro photography.

Times of Youth: Among your works, which one is your personal favorite? Why? 

I have an image of a beautiful green fern growing over top of a black charred tree trunk that was lying on the ground.  It has won me more awards and more honors than any other image I’ve shot.  The other significance of this mage is it was shot during the time when I started to really grasp macro photography and started to produce good quality images.  That was about three years after I started photography.
Times of Youth: You have been published by several iconic publishers in the the stream of photography. Has there been any accomplishment that you are especially proud of? 

I am not a good writer, and in high school was lucky to get Ds in English, so I was the proudest of my very first article in 2005 that was published by Outdoor Photographer Magazine. Happily many more came after that first one.
Times of Youth: Having won several awards in your field, you continue your magnificent work successfully. Which has been your most unforgettable moment of all? 

It was the very first image I had published in 2004 in Outdoor Photographer Magazine.  I was so excited that I called everyone I knew, and told everyone on the internet about my accomplishment.  That was very special day and very honored that I produced an image worthy of being accepted by a major photo magazine.  It sure fueled the fire for my photography.

What is the first word that comes to your mind when you read the following- 

1. Camera: Nikon
2. Macro: Small details in nature.
3. Beauty: Macro subjects.
4. Love: Creating art with a camera.
5. Life: Live as much as you can in the outdoors.

Rapid fire:

1. What cameras do you work with? Nikon D7000.
2. If you had to choose one lens which one would it be? Tamron 16-300.
3. What is your favorite photography accessory, other than your camera? A diffuser.
4. How would you describe your style? Creative Macro
5. What is your most used image editing software, tool, plug-in, action set etc.? I use Photoshop Elements, Nik Software, Topaz Software, and Smart Photo Editor.

Times of Youth: One of today’s main discussion points amongst photographers is about the use of digital photography and computer softwares to beautify the clicks; what is the influence of digitalization on your photography? 

I love that the post processing gives us so many creative options to enhance our images. Photography now has to stages, the creation of the images, and the enhancements through the post processing.

Times of Youth: How is the market for macro imagery in these current times of extreme digitalization?  

It’s great for selling to people interested in fine art photography for their homes, but as for stock photographers, I have no idea as I don’t participate in that area.

Times of Youth: Marketing and self promotion is crucial to photographers as other businesses. What is your ultimate strategy to capture the audiences? 

My business would not exist if it wasn’t for the internet.  Before the internet the only way you became know as a nature photographer was by having a book published and on a bookstore shelf, or you did a lot of writing for the photo mags.  Now you can become very well known by being out there on all the photo sites, writing blog posts, posting on all the media sites, Facebook, google+, twitter, etc.

Times of Youth: What do you think is the biggest obstacle for established professionals like yourself to remain successful in today’s times? 

One obstacle is that everyone that owns a camera now wants to sell their work or teach, and that cuts into everyone’s business. So you have to be always improving your skills and images, and staying very active online.  I’m online 365 days a year keeping my name out there.

Times of Youth: What advice would you have for those youngsters via TIMES OF YOUTH who dream to be photographers as prolific as you? 

Spend as many hours as you possibly can honing your craft, and get online and participate on as many sites as you can find on photography.  Start a blog giving helpful tips about photography and build a following.

Times of Youth: Do tell us how your fans can contact you to share their appreciation/feedback/suggestions. 

Contact me at [email protected]  My website is www.tinylandscapes.com, my blog is www.MikeMoatsBlog.com and my storefront is www.macrostoreonline.com.  Look me up on facebook.

Times of Youth: Any advice you’d give to aspiring youngsters who want to enter movies now or in the future? 

In the book called “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, he say those who reached the top of their craft, were found to have spent an average of 10,000 hours practicing.  Work hard and you will get rewarded.

Times of Youth: Tell us a little about your background and your research. How did you get interested to preach Islam?

Dr. Bilal Philips: My preaching, promoting and propagating Islam activities started with my conversion to Islam. Naturally, any new convert is driven to want to share Islam with those around them. With your parents, your brothers and sisters, your other family members, your neighbors and your friends. You could say that was my basic drive to want to share, propagate, and promote Islam.

I immediately began to seek knowledge, from the time that I first entered Islam in 1972. I sought to understand Islam more in depth, because the more I could understand, the better I could explain it to others. Within the first year, I quickly ran out of local sources for Islamic learning in Toronto, Canada, and I decided to go overseas to Saudi Arabia to study there. While studying there I used to come home in during the summers, to Canada and to the USA in order to share what I learned.  After graduation from Madeenah University in 1980, I went to Riyadh and started my Masters there and at the same time became a High School teacher of Islamic Studies. This became the new arena in which I became engaged in propagating Islam to Muslim youths.  During this period I was also forced into writing. I wasn’t originally a writer but I used to read a lot. However, when I started to teach Islamic Studies, I found that there were no Islamic studies textbooks available in English, so I had to create something. I began the process of preparing material based on my studies in Madeenah which I would teach from. The students used my notes as texts from which they could revise for their tests and exams. With the help of my parents, father in particular who was an English language expert, I soon developed effective writing skills. My parents guided me, and taught me, not only how to write, but also teaching methodology and classroom management.

My high school career lasted for over 10 years during which I completed my Masters and began a PhD in Islamic Theology from the University of Wales, UK. After completion of my doctorate in 1993, I moved to the UAE where I became a University professor in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University in Dubai. Naturally, the university became another avenue for propagation and promotion of Islam to young adults. In UAE, I also set up the first Da’wah Center for propagating Islam to non-Muslims in Dubai, The Islamic Information Center. Through that avenue I was full-time actively involved in teaching, preaching, and promoting Islam and thousands accepted Islam from the Center over the subsequent years. I also became the head of Darul Fatah’s English press and published a number of my books through them. In 2001, I developed a department of Islamic studies at Preston University, Ajman, to further preach and teach Islam from an educational institution. A few years later, after moving to Qatar where I was a consultant for a Da’wah Center, I again moved to Chennai, India where in 2009 I set up my own University, Preston International College, and Al Fajr International School. These were additional channels for promoting, propagating and preaching Islam. In 2010, I took my boldest step to preach Islam globally by setting up the Islamic Online University (IOU), which now has over 2,00,000 students from 225 countries of the world. The IOU has the most diverse student body of any university in the world; a unique platform from which I continue my preaching, teaching and Islamic propagational efforts. That is where I am today.

I was also given the opportunity to propagate Islam through the television, in Saudi Arabia Channel 2. I did a program there called “Why Islam?” in which I focused on the new Muslims. I had different new Muslims each episode who described their journey to Islam and focusing on the turning point. I would use that as a means of inviting non Muslims who would be watching the program who may share common backgrounds to want to share the message of Islam. In UAE, I was invited to do 3 programs a week, on Sharjah television. All of them da’wah oriented, some of them question and answer types. One related to the Quran in particular, and the other one related to contemporary issues. Of course, a lot of people know me through Peace TV, so this is the channel I also utilize, as well as Islam channel in the UK, Guide US TV in the US, etc.

Times of Youth: For those who do not know you, could you describe yourself and your work in brief?

Yvonne Maffei: I’m a Food Writer, Recipe Developer and the Publisher of MyHalalKitchen.com. I create, test and write recipes for my website and other publications as well as do the food styling and photography for the website’s recipes and articles.

Times of Youth: Despite of being a Graduate in International Studies, Journalism and Health, what got you more interested in the arena of cooking?

Yvonne Maffei: I have been interested in good food since I was a young girl. My Sicilian grandparents on one side and Puerto Rican on the other surrounded me with the most delicious and interesting foods during my entire childhood and my parents carried on the tradition of being interested in international cuisine, exotic foods and flavors and travel. I grew up in a small town in Ohio surrounded by Amish towns and local farm fresh produce, so I was fortunate enough to know what local and seasonal fruits and vegetables should taste like. When I went away to college, my mom supplied me with boxes of great cookware and cooking utensils that I used to experiment in my own kitchen. During that time, I also studied abroad and traveled extensively so I was able to explore different cultures and their way of eating and cooking hands-on. My family and the world I explored was literally my classroom.

Times of Youth: Tell us about your tasteful endeavors for your blog My Halal Kitchen. How did the name come about? Did you expect that it would reach this level when you created it at first?

Yvonne Maffei: I really wanted to share the recipes I was making, all with the halal substitutes I had tried and tested out over the years. I chose the domain name that resonated with the concept and was available at the time. I hoped and prayed that people of all faiths and backgrounds would find the recipes simple, inspiring and delicious enough to try as well as having an openness about the concept of halal. I had no expectation about how many people would enjoy what I was sharing, but I just kept pursuing the concept with all my heart and soul. With each recipe created and shared, that’s still all at the top of my mind.

Times of Youth: Hailing from Puerto Rican and Sicilian heritage and bred in the U.S. with an experience of living in several places across the globe, how do you feel it influenced your cooking style?

Yvonne Maffei: Well, I think I come from two ethnic traditions that really love and embrace their cultures and their food. In both cultures there is a reverence for real food, for family, for native and traditional dishes, too, and that’s something I really held onto as I was growing up and seeing the food world as a whole change dramatically. It made me sad and disillusioned because I wanted to, in some way, preserve the beauty and the nutrition that real traditional cuisine can bring to people. I watched my grandmothers nourish us with good food and be the connectors of family and friends around the table with the creations they made. They were really the glue that connected everyone and bonded us for life. When I began to eat only ‘dhabiha halal’ (Islamically slaughtered and permissible) food, it was the perfect opportunity to go back to traditional cuisine (i.e. cooking with real chicken broth as opposed to a hydrogenated oil) and capture the essence of certain dishes some of us hadn’t eaten in years. I then discovered that the reason everyone loved traditional foods was often times the quality of ingredients and the use of real food products. You could say that ‘revival’ process helped me to become a real cook and truly enjoy pursuing it as a career.

Times of Youth: From where do you draw inspiration to design the new dishes?

Yvonne Maffei: I get inspiration from a lot of places, but mainly just how I feel and what I’m going through in my life at the time. For example, when I’m feeling sluggish and want to clean up my diet, I’ll share green juices or fresh salads; when I’m traveling to certain places around the country or the world, I’ll share recipes for dishes I’ve re-created from restaurant visits. It’s all very personal and experience-centered.

Times of Youth: What has been your most delicious recipe ever?

Yvonne Maffei: That’s hard to answer! I don’t like to play favorites with my food or cuisine, but I’ll go with my homemade Baked Mastaciolli recipe. It’s a mixture of using my Sicilian grandmother’s tomato sauce recipe, adding meat and all the halal cheese varieties I’ve discovered over the years and putting them into one big baking pan and serving up for my guests. It’s my tried and true recipe for entertaining because I have confidence that just about everyone and anyone will like it, especially the kids! The recipe can be found on my website.

Times of Youth: You also have a line of kitchen aprons and napkins. How would you describe it to an international audience and potential buyers?

Yvonne Maffei: As Muslims with our own holidays and celebrations, I just thought it would be fun (and it wasn’t available anywhere else) to have aprons that exhibit our happiness for the occasions- the aprons and napkins say “Ramadan Mubarak” and “Eid Mubarak” and are great ways to share the celebratory feel with your guests or wear the messaging as you cook up great meals in your very own halal kitchen.

Times of Youth: According to you, what makes any dish ‘halal’? 

Yvonne Maffei: Well, halal food and ingredients are certainly abundant, so that’s why I know any dish can be made halal and that means globally-inspired food, not just food from a particular region or ethnic group. It’s basically the absence of non-halal i.e, ‘haram’ ingredients that makes a dish halal, and fortunately for us there are great substitutes around to make that possible.

Times of Youth: Do you think taste matters more or the presentation? 

Yvonne Maffei: They say you eat first with your eyes, then your nose and last with your taste buds. I say it’s all important but in reality who is going to eat something that looks terrible and they have to be convinced that it’s actually pretty tasty? Taste as you cook then present the food beautifully, even if it’s just for yourself. That’s the beauty of Allah’s creations- He made so much and everything so beautiful to our eyes and halal to us. Why not embrace it, enjoy it and share that with others? I’m reminded of Surah Rahman of The Noble Quran where Allah tells us, “Which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?”

Times of Youth: Which cuisine do you favor/relate to the most? 

Yvonne Maffei: I think Sicilian food will always be my comfort food. It will always remind me of the love, comfort and security of home and family, and because it’s full of healthy Mediterranean ingredients, I think it does double duty for me!

Times of Youth: We hear that you happened to accept Islam just before 9-11. Could you tell us how has your journey as a Muslim been so far? What impact did it have on your skills?

Yvonne Maffei: As life would have it, my journey has been full of ups and downs, but it has helped me narrow my focus and become clear on how I want to use the gifts Allah Almighty gave to me. At this point it’s about providing simple and delicious recipes to help everyone understand what halal is all about, help bring it to mainstream as a normal, natural and healthy way of eating and to really bring more awareness to our community and the world about the state of our current food system. I am so incredibly passionate about equal access to real food for everyone and on making natural, organic foods the norm once again, about saving the bees and saving our environment. The fact that those things are in line with Islam and an Islamic way of life, it helps me feel that my work is in line with my values and vice versa. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. Alhamdullilah.

Times of Youth: What do you prefer to do when you’re not cooking or blogging? 

Yvonne Maffei: Gardening and nesting at home are my absolute next favorite things to do. Although I love to travel, I also absolutely love to be at home tinkering around cleaning, organizing and rearranging things. It’s my personal space, my sanctuary and where I feel the happiest, so I want it to be comfy and cozy for my family and everyone who visits.

Rapid fire-

Food: Nourishment
Love: Peaceful living
Halal: God says it’s good for us
Family: Unconditional love
Kitchen: Healthy creative expression

Times of Youth: Which has been the most unforgettable moment/feedback in your scrumptious journey?

Yvonne Maffei: I don’t think there’s been just one, but rather a collection of moments particularly with the amazing people I’ve been blessed to meet because of the work I do. I am able to connect with people who care about food, food justice, halal, gardening, community service, education, children, health and wellness, etc. and the list goes on which is what I love about this work. Life becomes rich with experiences and relationships with people I may not have ever come into contact with otherwise, Allahu’alim. That’s how I want to live my life and hope I can be as useful and enriching to others as they are to me.

Times of Youth: Since Ramadan is just around the corner in about a month’s time, what would be your numero uno advice to the ladies with regards to cooking?

Yvonne Maffei: Plan, plan and plan some more. With planning, you become organized because you figure out what you have, what you don’t, what you have time for and what you don’t have time for, and you can get a sense of peace and calm because you’re taking action and becoming proactive about the time you have surrounding meals, ibadah (worship) and everything else that you have to do during the month. I wrote several articles over the years about this topic, which are all on the website.

Times of Youth: What are the upcoming projects for Yvonne Maffei and My Halal Kitchen?

Yvonne Maffei: There’s a lot in the works, but I’m taking it all one day at a time to make sure they’re all done well, insha’Allah. Right now, we have a free app for Android phones and are waiting on approval for our iOS app, so readers can get the same information from our website that they would get by being logged in to a computer. I’m working on more books, live demos around the country and insha’Allah the globe, and soon hope to add more content on the website from other halal foodies. We’ll see where it all goes- we plan and plan but Allah Almighty is the best of planners indeed!

Times of Youth: What advice would you give to young aspiring chefs via TIMES OF YOUTH?

Yvonne Maffei: Don’t try to be like anyone else but ‘YOU’. Find out who your authentic self is as a person- who are you, what’s your mission in life, why you’re into cooking and what path down the culinary road would make you happiest. It’s okay to admire and look up to other chefs, cooks, bloggers, TV personalities, but sometimes it can make a person feel that they are less than adequate. I just want anyone starting out to know that your journey is unique and so are you- we can all be in this field together and bring something special, unique and truly beautiful to share with the world.

Times of Youth: Do tell us how can fans and foodies contact you to share their appreciation and feedback.

Yvonne Maffei: I love to hear from readers. They can contact me via my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/myhalalkitchen or by email at:[email protected] I try to respond to each and every inquiry, even if it takes a while to get to them!