Homeless & hot

sashbar · Jul 10, 2014

The_Traveler said:
Example 2)
You are sitting at a wedding reception taking casual shots and your beloved, hefty niece falls on the dance floor revealing that she is barely wearing thong underwear
Her entire but is exposed to the crowd and to your camera.
Would you take a picture and post that on the Internet?

What if the hefty niece falls on the dance floor revealing her entire bottom with the tattoo "I am shagging the groom". Shall I shoot?

PS Just to make it clear - I am actually with Lew here in principle, as I think these types of shots should be justified. Not that you can not take it, but you need to be very critical when considering sharing it. This particular shot is not really compromising the homeless guy, there are much worse images, but nevertheless we need to keep it somewhere in the back of our mind, that sometimes it is inappropriate.

Vince.1551 · Jul 10, 2014

Someone should stop the press from taking any photos and publishing them ...

molested_cow · Jul 10, 2014

Regardless of ethical issues, on which I don't have much opinion, I think the main problem here isn't the color, but the angle at which you took this shot. I honestly don't think you put too much thought into this composition. It looked like someone taking a quick snap shot from the eye level, just trying to capture what's happening, but not thinking about how you want it to be seen through your photograph. For time when I am shooting subjects that are not at my height, like kids, pets etc, I always think about the level that I want to shoot at. In this case, it just looks like a convenient shot from standing height, but to me, seems rather inconsiderate. May be that's what you were looking for. Also, rather than capturing the entire person, perhaps focusing on certain details only will help tell a stronger story.

tirediron · Jul 10, 2014

The_Traveler said:
...You aren't the best person to judge whether your actions were exploitation.
You have to accept that not everyone wants their state to be exposed to the world - the homeless are particularly vulnerable because they really don't have any place to hide.
If that homeless person were your father, brother, son, nephew, I would hope that you would be compassionate enough about them to respect their privacy and not expose their situation any more.

You certainly aren't telling or showing us anything either new, interesting or educational; certainly nothing that would justify violating what little privacy this person has.

Ehhh... really? Why is he less able to judge than you, I, or anyone else? This is not something that can be defined objectively. Whether it is or is not exploitive is purely opinion. As far as the issue of privacy goes, I can't imagine that someone who chooses to sleep on what appears to be a public sidewalk has any expectation of privacy whatsoever.

The image in and of itself doesn't really do anything for me; I appreciate it was a spontaneous capture, but the extreme dynamic range and awkward composition just leave me asking, "Why shoot this in the first place?"

rexbobcat · Jul 10, 2014

Shoot what you want. If someone feels the need to be offended then let them be offended and just remember that it's warmer in hell than it is on that moral high horse.

imprezzyou · Jul 10, 2014

The_Traveler said:
You certainly aren't telling or showing us anything either new, interesting or educational; certainly nothing that would justify violating what little privacy this person has.

who cares that he took the pic, its life. Its just another reminder to show us how ass backwards our country can be and that nobody does anything about it.

but maybe next time throw him a couple bucks, modeling isn't free now a days

Kendall9991 · Jul 10, 2014

I like it. Its life.

Moral wise.....who cares

Agree with the post above 100%

JacaRanda · Jul 10, 2014

Man, this whole photography thing can really be a downer at times.

Monday · Jul 10, 2014

mmaria said:
BrightByNature said:

Not sure which is better - black and white, or color ...

Click to expand...

none

sorry

I have to fall in the none camp as well.

Maybe I am jaded because I walk by this stuff every day on my way into work. There is a very wide grey line on this subject matter. In the end it is up to you as the artist where that line is. I end up taking several shots of such things. However this one for me falls under the fact there is no real story to be told about it. The environment doesn't tell a story. If there was some kind of story being told it may be a different.

I still tackle this line myself but just shooting someone down and out doesn't do it for me. If he had an interesting collection of items that helped tell his story, or interesting interaction from passers that invoked a mood or showed contrast to the environment around him, or maybe even really interesting light play it would have made a compelling subject matter.

vintagesnaps · Jul 10, 2014

I like it better in B&W because it seems to be somewhat about the dark and light. I think it's actually kind of interesting that his face is in the darkness, seems to fit the circumstances. I might adjust the contrast (I'm thinking it might have been a tricky exposure) since he's partly in sun that somewhat washed out the color in the brighter part of the image.

I think there's more space than you need to the right, I might make copies and try some different crops. I might crop the top too slightly to eliminate some distracting shapes as well as cropping the right side. I think the long shadow takes your eyes along it and there's nothing there to see, so I might try to minimize it in the composition.

Having worked in a major city doing home visits I feel like I've seen people out on the street often enough with their shopping carts etc., but there seems to be something disturbing about seeing someone sleeping on the sidewalk in bright daylight. I don't think it's necessarily exploitive to take the picture, it depends on how you use it. The intent here seems to be to show it to other photographers.

keyseddie · Jul 10, 2014

The Arab area of Marseille reminds me of the Gaza strip. Neither place very friendly to one who looks like me. I passed by this sorry looking lady twice not planning on taking her photograph. Changed my mind a few hrs later after seeing her still there. Had a use for the image but never published it till this thread. I gave her a couple euros but I was still a little nervous about other people in the area as I seemed to be suspicious to them. I took it and left that part of town.

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Vince.1551 · Jul 10, 2014

Typical example of someone snatching OP's original post and probably seeking attention ;-)

If you can't take a photo of a homeless then you can't take any street photos which doesn't make sense.