Chapter 9: Taking a Stand

Image Sources: (left photo) revlisad.com and (right photo) upwardsleader.com

Personal Reaction:
I express my opinions about things with others in person, through social media, and with blogs and essays, but I don't often take the risk of sharing where I stand on a controversial topic or issue. It can be hard to share what you think about something controversial, especially if you know others who disagree or are likely to disagree with you, but it is important to stand up and speak out about important issues that need to be made known to others in order to make the world a better place.

This chapter helped me to think about how to take a stand in my writing in the right way: picking a topic that is relevant and interesting to my audience, developing a thesis that is narrowed and debatable, and providing sufficient evidence to back up my claims. But, more than that, this chapter reminded me about the importance of identifying, analyzing, and evaluating exactly what position I take on an issue or controversy and why I take that position. 

Professional Reaction:
I assume our teacher assigned this chapter during this time to help us brainstorm ideas for controversial topics we may want to take a stand on and write about in our next essay. She probably also did so to help us learn how to present our position in the best way. 

I think one of the most valuable tips in this chapter is to first think of a specific question that invites debate, create a thesis with your answer to the question, and then form your essay by giving reasons (backed up with solid evidence) why you have that opinion about the particular issue or controversy. I had never really thought about asking questions to narrow and focus my thesis for an argumentative essay. I think the tips in this chapter will definitely come in handy when I'm brainstorming a topic to write about for my next essay and when I am actually writing it.

Written by Hayley Leach

My Elevator Pitch

Click here to see full Elevator Pitch

Hey, guys! Because I'm sick, I was not able to present my Elevator Pitch. Although my professor presented it for me, I decided that I wanted to comment a bit on the different elements of my pitch. So, that's what I'm doing with this blog post. I thought I would use some of the visual elements discussed in class to best explain what I did and why I chose these elements.

• Line: In my pitch, I tried to direct the viewer's line of sight from the text to the image and vice versa. The first slide starts with a photo on the left middle, then continues with a photo on the lower right side and a photo on the upper left. I tried to alternate the placement of photos and text to make the pitch more interesting. 
• Color: I used a variety of colors in the images to show my interest in colors, but I stuck with black and an aqua/teal color for the text. I began and ended my pitch with black and white photos to wrap it all together.
• Shape: I mainly used circles and half circles to frame my images, which I think helps to make all the slides fit together and make them look clean and simple.
• Light and Shadow/Contrast: In some photos, there is some light and shadow, but I mostly think I used contrast quite a bit in my pitch. There is contrast between the vibrant colors in my images versus the plain white background of each slide. There is also a kind of contrast between the black text and the text emphasized with a curly, teal font. 
• Design/Layout/Style: I tried to design this layout to be interesting, but also clean and simple and avoid overwhelming the viewer with too much visual stimuli. Most of the time, I tried to emphasize certain words on each slide that either seemed important to me or had something to do with the photo I chose for each slide. Basically, I wanted to make my pitch short, sweet, clean and simple, while also looking modern and stylish.

Below are two slides I wanted to go more in depth about.

This slide is obviously about my interest in photography. I chose the photo above, which I took of a friend taking pictures with her phone. I also just realized that there is a person (my friend), an object (her phone), and nature (grass, water, trees, and mountains) in this photo, which demonstrates the three things I mention in the text. I hadn't really planned that out, but it worked out nicely.

This slide is meant to convey my interest in organizing my space and show exactly what my desk area looked like a couple years ago versus how it looks now and how it has improved. I'm happy with the progress I've made with reorganization and minimizing clutter, so I thought I would share it with you all.

Well, that's it. Thank you for reading all the way to the end of this post!

P.S. I'm sad I had to miss out on seeing all of my classmates' pitches. I'd love to see some of them, if you'd like to share them with me. You could link them in the comments below this post or post them to your own blogs. I'll see you guys next week!

Elevator Pitch

In class we are to create an “Elevator pitch” that selling us to ourselves to our audience. Whatever it may consist of, it is supposed to include who we are, what is important to us, and/or why it is important to us? Immediately I thought about my career in Criminal Justice and what I plan on pursuing after I finish my degree. What do I want to do with Criminal Justice? Well, I would love to be a juvenile probation officer! It’s always been a passion of mine to provide a helping hand to the youth and guide them through their milestones in life. May sound cliché but I want to serve the youth and be the advocate for a positive living to set an example for the children that I may come in contact with.

In my Elevator Pitch I want you to feel how I feel… I want you to know how important this is to me and I want you see why! This is all describe in 8 different forms:

·         Line: In my power point I want it to be visual appealing and very neat. How did I do that? I don’t want my audience to feel like their eyes can’t focus, so I made it a point to visually guide their eyes with ease and tell my story without saying a word.

·         Color: Color is key! Colors can make a person feel a certain type of way, so I wanted to make sure that they feel passion and purpose in my slide… Hence using Deep Coral to emphasis my main point of this project.

·         Texture and Shape: For me, texture and shapes go hand in hand because I want my images to tie in with my context. Texture can be the texture in the image and this can make the image stand out, like the texture of my skirt or the littles girl dress (in the picture above). The shape can be the cut of the image (like the vertical cut above) which can align the rest of the slide concerning the text and other images that may be included. Again I want to guide my audience eyes with ease.

·         Light/shadow: I picked the white and black tone for my photos because I feel like it gives my story history. It gives me the sense of timelessness.

·         Design/Layout: I picked a very simple layout that goes with my theme. I tried to create a simple theme to help the pictures and Deep Coral color stand out to audience.

·         Style and medium : The approach that I went with is clean cut and straight to the point. The context is very clear and you can definitely see what I am trying to express in each slide. I tried to be short but not too short. The color in my images is simple but also timeless. 

Elevator Pitch Image Analysis

I was assigned to post an image I used in my elevator pitch to this blog and explain why I chose to use it and evaluate the quality of the image.

Firstly, this is a photo I took of myself in the mirror a few years ago. I used this image on the last slide of my elevator pitch with the caption, Images by Hayley Leach, because I wanted to show myself holding a camera to best represent myself as a photographer. I used Instagram to convert the photo to black and white and I used picmonkey.com to frame it inside of a circle.

Now, I will evaluate the quality of my image based on the elements of art which have been discussed in class.

• Line: When I look at this image, my line of sight is from the camera lens to my eye peeking over the camera. I think this is because the lens is placed in the middle of the photo and my eye behind the camera is lit up in a way that catches the viewer's eye and directs it away from the camera.
• Color: I changed this image to black and white to make it more simple, less busy, and to capture the essence of the photo rather than distract the viewer with too much color. I think this also made this photo fit with the color scheme I used for my text.
• Texture: I think this photo captures the smooth, reflective quality of my camera and my glasses. You can also see the folds of the curtain in the background. Also, the black and white filter I used has a bit of a grainy quality, which makes some parts of the photo look worn or distressed.
• Shape: I mostly used circles in this image. The lens, my eye, and the photo itself are all circles. In fact, I shaped all my photos for my elevator pitch into circles and half-circles, to keep the slides consistent.
• Light and Shadow/Contrast: Because this photo is black and white, the light and shadow is very important. This photo does not have a lot of shadow, but the highlights do contrast well with darker elements of the photo, such as my hair, palms, eyebrows, camera, and the frame of my glasses.
• Design/Layout: My design theme is the use of circles, and this image fits well with that theme.
• Style: The style I chose for my elevator pitch is very simple and clean, and I think this photo is simple and focused on the subject in a way that is not too complex.
• Medium: The medium I used for my elevator pitch is digital images I photographed and edited myself, and this is a digital photo I photographed and edited, so it fits with the other images in my elevator pitch.

Written by Hayley Leach

Image by Hayley Leach

Image Analysis by That One Guy From Venus (Patrick McGill)

Image analysis by That One Guy from Venus (Patrick McGill)

During my elevator pitch I am trying to market myself to a kind of consumer. This is incredibly difficult for me as I consider myself to be one of the more boring members of my species. However as my friends have told me time and time again I am actually relatively interesting? Either way I decided for an all around approach to my pitch originally, however now I think I want to focus on my ASL and how that applies to my life and communication skills. I think it'll add a kind of mystery or wow factor which captures my audiences attention more vigorously than standing up there and telling everyone how I can shuffle cards better than most. Either way I am really starting to enjoy this project as I am forced to analyze myself closely for anything that can make a huge impact with as little words as possible.

Line - The lines in this picture offer a base for text and other images, the sign also can highlight a specific part of text or frame a phrase.

Color- this picture is lacking in color apart form the plain black and white.

Texture - While this picture is devoid of texture one can get a sense of it by relating the image to their own experience, or in this case hand.

Shape - The interesting part about this hand is that it is the ASL (American Sign Language) sign for the letter L. The hand can be used for many things but I always found that ASL just has a beauty to it that wasn't there before.

Light/Shadow - There isn't much to deal with light and shadow in this picture, except around the wrist which is there to add some depth to the picture as a whole.

Design/Layout - The picture is vertical, which means that if it was used for the elevator pitch it would have to be in a format where the words are inside the L. That can highlight the text without being too invasive, it also allows for some interesting font choices to go along with  it.

Style - ASL is very distinct and has a lot of signs which anyone can either recognize or relate to. Many new signs actually come from slang or other means of communication commonly found in English before evolving over to ASL.

Medium - This two dimensional image doesn't do much, however I found that it can highlight or give purpose to an otherwise dull block of text. The medium however looks to be a kind of ink and paper, nothing too exciting but just what I need for my Elevator Pitch.