humanity

What it means to be a member of humanity.

What does it mean to be human? That is society’s question that still remains in today’s world. To be human is to have emotion and language. To care for your family, friends and peers is to be human. To speak their language is also to be human. Humanity is what separates us from animals. We are at the top of the food chain. We are the fittest and we survive. Why? We have intelligence, logic and reasoning. Intelligence in humans is to make complex inventions crucial to our survival. Humans have logic to avoid those careless mistakes that could cost us our lives.

We also have reasoning to get ourselves out of danger against an opponent, whether it is physical, mental or emotional. We are the only species on Earth that knows of one more possible cause of death, old age. Most of us also believe in an afterlife, those that have religions anyways. Every single species on Earth has needs, but we have one more reason of why we are human. We also have wants. We could want something and not need that particular thing at all. We also have factors that shape us, that make us human.

What shapes a human’s life? Society, environment and nature all shape every human in this world. Society’s morals, customs, and cultures can influence how a person behaves in front of others. We humans also tend to imitate our parents and peers in what they do, thus environment influences our humanity. Maybe we just are born the way we are. It’s in our genes to be human, it’s our nature. Our species are the only ones that can be spiritual. Our spirituality also influences how we are human. While society and environment influences how we are human, we have a level of responsibility alongside with society also.

What is a person’s level of responsibility for his actions? What about the level of responsibility for society? When we perceive a particular act of society, we can choose to follow it or dismiss it from our attention. Isn’t society just a bunch of people choosing to act a certain way or dismissing it from their attention? Individuals are more responsible for their actions than the responsibility of society for influencing those individuals. In fact, we are ninety percent responsible for our actions and society is only ten percent responsible for our actions. We know why we are human, but we don’t know why we were put on Earth.

What is humanity’s purpose? Why are we here? The reasons of us dwelling on this earth are mostly spiritual in nature. The reasons could be philosophical as well. Most people have a religion on this earth. Christianity states that humans are here on this earthto care for God’s creations and worship Him. The philosophical side of the question is that we were put here on Earth to obtain new information and gradually evolve to greatness.

We are perhaps the only species on Earth to try to philosophize and spiritualize about why we are here. Yet another reason why we are separated from animals themselves! All of these factors combined make us a unique species on Earth. Yet, with all this information on ourselves, we still have countless questions of our origins. We still wonder today how we came to be. We wonder how we are such a unique species. We at least know one major detail of ourselves. That is, we are Homo sapiens. We are humans!

from http://socyberty.com/philosophy/what-it-means-to-be-human/

The basic human wants

After thinking for a while, I came up with the following list of those fundamental things that every human wants:

• attention
• importance
• companionship
• entertainment
• sex
• knowledge
• time
• relaxation
• success (at any challenge/goal)
• earn/save significant (relative to the individual) amounts of money
• and even though it’s sort of implied: power to get any of the aforementioned items

from http://www.itsrishi.com/archives/2006/06/09/the-basic-human-wants/




http://www.itstime.com/jun97.htm good website but too much to copy and paste.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs theres a good table on here listing things under catagories

Loretta Lux

"Colours are extremely important to me. I love colours. Colours can be used to evoke feelings or convey certain states of mind. However, recently I have started to explore black and white photography. I am interested in the mental process which translates black and white into colour." Quote from Photo-Wisdom by Lewis Blackwell

James Mollison

"Photography is the most amazing key to the world. I feel very privileged to experience the world through photography, and to have met the people I have because of it. It is incredible to have photography as a witness to my life and what I have done." Quote from Photo-Wisdom by Lewis Blackwell

Erwin Olaf

"In the early nineties I was anti-Photoshop. It changed when I did the project Mature: I had these women who I wanted to give grey hair, and so I had them wear wigs, but I wanted to touch out the underlying hair. A small thing, but it opened up my eyes. What particually attracted me when I started working digitally was that you had good colour management, better than with film. So this allowed me to move from mostly black and white to working with reduced colour. When I first began with the digital I made a series of over-the-top Photoshop images. Nowadays I use it in a more modest way." Quote from Photo-Wisdom by Lewis Blackwell

David LaChapelle

"I think my images have always been big, it's the magazines that got smaller, to misquote Sunset Boulevard" Quote from Photo-Wisdom by Lewis Blackwell

I think its pretty safe to say everyone has been in love with the work of LaChapelle at one time or another.

Andrew Zuckerman

"It is an antiquated idea not to want to talk about how you made things. It comes from a time when people thought they would have their ideas stolen. I am not scared of anybody repeating me because it is impossible, as I am moving forward; I am somewhere else. I am thirty-one years old, in the first section of my career. I have just completed my 10,000 hours practice, as Gladwell would see it. I hope I am getting closer to exposing my DNA through my work and fulfilling my curiosities in my work, and not doing this in a selfish way - I want my work to continue to be broad in its subject and appeal to affect people." Quote from Photo-Wisdom by Lewis Blackwell

Zuckerman is one of those people that really amaze me. Mainly his images of animals, but those of people aswell. His lighting is always exceptional and something that isn't seen so often. Along with the patience that shows in his work with the animal shots. Although this is supposed to be for my people research I got totally carried away with the animals .. so the people are at the bottom!