Blackburn wins YOBIPics Contest

VALDOSTA -- VSU student Paul Blackburn was recently named a grand-prize winner in a photography contest for YOBI.tv, The Talent Network.

Blackburn won the June 2011 YOBIPics contest for his picture, “Fountain of Youth.” As a grand-prize winner, he will be flown to Detroit to work on a new web series titled, “Random Talent,” which features Jersey Shore star, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino.

“I will be flying out the first week of September to be an on-set photographer and to help with the crew behind the scenes,” Blackburn said. “I am very excited to start.”

Blackburn was motivated to enter the contest after his former roommates won similar contests through YOBI.tv.

“My roommate at the time, Michael Barlow, had won second place in the YOBISing contest the season before I entered, and our other roommate, Justin Patten, had won the YOBIfilm contest. So both of them had inspired me to enter the contest.”

Blackburn hopes to gain exposure through this opportunity.

“My life goal is to be a mainstream musician/artist and really, an actor,” he said. “I was very surprised when I found out I made the finals, and then even more surprised that I won. I never even had the intention of winning, although I thought that it would be something wonderful to win.”

A Loganville native, Blackburn is approaching his fourth year at VSU, majoring in Foreign Language Education with an emphasis in French. He is currently a VSU orientation leader as well.

“Paul is an exceptional young man with a lot of vision and drive,” said Brenda Beasley, coordinator of orientation and leadership programs at VSU. “I am very proud of him; he just doesn’t give up on his dreams. This opportunity will cause him to miss fall semester, but it’s a small sacrifice to begin building a career that he loves.”

YOBI.tv is an online network that exposes audiences to new and undiscovered talent. To view Blackburn being announced as the winner, visit http://yobi.tv/yobipics/ .