Isabella Leslie-Miller from Redhill School recently won the Adobe Certified Associate National Competition.
This involved achieving a corporate-level qualification in Adobe Photoshop which includes demonstrating proficiency and skill with the software.
“Isabella placed first in the national competition and therefore qualifies to represent South Africa in the world championship in August,” said Melissa Lai, director of communications and marketing at Redhill School.
Leslie-Miller said she feels privileged to have been selected to represent South Africa on an international level and said that her dad played a big role in inspiring her to follow this creative path. “My father was a professional aviation photographer. I would spend hours watching him edit his work for magazines, asking him how everything worked.
“In my childhood, I had a slight tendency towards drawing instead of running around in the sun, but I’m no child prodigy. I was as creative as anyone with an abundance of crayons and Play-Doh.”
“Taking visual art as a subject has certainly pushed me to engage with creativity much more than I would have without it.”
The Adobe Certified Associate National Competition is a twofold event. First, students have to gain the qualifications from Adobe necessary to enter; and second, a poster has to be created for a non-profit organisation. This year, the design brief revolved around promoting recycling.
“I was handed a USB with a set of images – almost stock photos of things like
apples and the recycling logo – and the specifications for the final image. I was given around five hours to complete the poster and I used my skills with photo-editing as well as a digital drawing tablet to create the poster.”
Leslie-Miller thanked the people for helping her on her road to success. “NETLearn for providing me with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; my art and design teachers, Marisa Mare and Bronwyn DeMatos-Ala, for guiding me through this process and always pushing me to be brave in the world of visual arts; and also my mother, Denise Bottger, who is possibly the strongest, kindest and most influential person in my life – she is the reason I’m able to achieve what I do.”
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