Spring 2023

Human League

“Human League” is a derivative of “I Dreamed About Being a Human Being” by Fran Simo licensed under CC BY-NC-SA-2.0. Originally downloaded 2/5/2023 in Pixlr and edited with Pixlr, Canva and Image Candy.

It is worth mentioning that to capture the idea behind the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1, it took a long time to just get it exactly right. There were images I took of Model MUN at the American School Foundation in Mexico City, images of barbed wire, and even an image of a young child as a refugee escaping into another border under barbed wire. The difficult issue was trying to find an that captured the MOST of what Article I was about, more than just one person. My only objection would be the use of the word brotherhood, as many of the articles and aspects of the U.N. Declaration were changed to represent all human beings, women and men.

The difficulty I found was trying to involve aspects of Contrast, Alignment, Repetition, and Proximity. Similar to the aspects of a podcast, there are several layers of editing, and this was edit after edit after edit to achieve the effect I wanted. Settling on the fonts of Montserrat Extra Bold for the text inside the textbox, as well as Canvas Sans for the Heading for Article 1 involved sifting through several fonts to achieve the desired impact of being able to see the text, represent an emotion, as well as fall into the Rule of Thirds effectively while performing the previous three actions. Additionally, working against a busy background and worrying about what would attract the viewer’s attention more all came into play. It certainly patience and many edits to perfect the result you want to attain from the public, and is one worthwhile taking your time on when representing a serious topic.

Defiance Rising

Jessie Owens Winning the Gold Medal during the 1936 Olympic Games Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-G00630 / Unknown author / CC-BY-SA 3.0

During the 1936 Olympic Games that were held in Berlin, Germany during the height of the Nazi’s Power. I can only imagine what they felt when a African American man won over what they thought of the “better man”. I felt the image was fitting during Black History month as a tribute to African American people because Jessie Owens overcame so many obstacles. When I saw this image it made me think of freedom and how everyone should be treated equal as long as they have respect and humanity towards the other person. (I’m also writing this as a caption so the image will not be misunderstood, that I am in no way for the Nazi’s idea)