Sacramento's Homeless "Tent City"

[Hooligan Dan]

Does that look better, Chairman? I lightened them just a tad and adjusted the contrast accordingly. Mind you I only adjusted the small internet versions. The print versions I've kept the darker versions and will adjust those as I need to when I print.

 

[Al-Wazeer]

you have some beautiful shots there

good job

 

[Chiller]

Wow!!. Very impressive series of photos. I could call this one of the best I have ever seen on TPF!!
Your eye, for emotion, and the way you have used the backgrounds and location to get the mood across is brilliant. Congrats on these. Very well done. :thumbup::thumbup:

 

[Hooligan Dan]

you have some beautiful shots there

good job

Wow!!. Very impressive series of photos. I could call this one of the best I have ever seen on TPF!!
Your eye, for emotion, and the way you have used the backgrounds and location to get the mood across is brilliant. Congrats on these. Very well done. :thumbup::thumbup:

Thank you, guys. Very much. I do really appreciate all the positive input. I worked hard on this one.

 

[Slaphead]

I have to say that it one of the best series of photographs I've seen.

Very impressed

 

[Mesoam]

i heard about this on NPR a few weeks ago, truly a sate state. Powerful shots!

 

[Montana]

Wow, a truely fantastic series! Although the subject matter is saddening, I feel that I could look at them again and again. I would be proud if those were my shots!

Derrick

Again~ outstanding work!

 

[abraxas]

You've very nice shots in there. A great series. Personally, I'd rather cause controversy with honest work as I think you have, and let them say whatever they say. No point in responding. At least they're talking about it.

 

[Photographergirl04]

Wow!! Awesome shots =D

 

[newrmdmike]

hahaha, what did america come too? -

i see tents (pretty decent looking), well clothed people, a dvd player(or laptop), headphones, bikes etc. dogs on LEASHES. You know you live in a great nation when our most impoverished people are still on par with some nations standards.

not to sound like i have no compassion, but everytime i'm in the field i have it worse than that. (except for the mental health and or drug issues)


nice work,

by the way, heres a link you might like for the next time someone points a knife in your direction California Concealed Carry (CCW)

pjs everywhere have been drawn to poverty porn so watch out. rarely do any of them present anything worthwile with the images they create, i've been guilty of it too . . . its why i stopped persuing photo journalism . . . Aside from lots of views and comments what does it accomplish? i hope you are able to put something together with these images that can tell people whats happening there and encourages some course of action rather than give a glimpse into tent city. (jounalistic ethics slipping? dunno . . . but i photographed landmine victims in cambodia and couldn't bring myself to publish them, because i knew it wasn't doing enough)

if they seem mentally sound and without substance abuse issues then why do you think they are there? did you ask any of them? it seems to me that most people have a support system of friends or family or church or government to help them in our nation until they can get on their feet, why don't they? are they persueing anything different in life? or are they content to squat there? so then is it really just a group of people who don't conform to our societies norms? or a failure of our social structure to take them under our wing? i think it says more about americans as individuals than our economy or government that we let these things happen, where were the churches? the families? the friends?

woo, rant over, hope it made sense. again, nice shots, they got me thinking! perhaps you have an artical you'll write to accompany them?

 

[Hooligan Dan]

The article ran yesterday. Since we don't consider Sacramento local(even though it's only 30 minutes away) they ran a feature on me going to tent city rather than a story on tent city itself. A short first person account of the situation and the kind or people there with a photo essay. Kinda odd really; a newspaper doing a feature on it's own employee.

But don't worry. I'm not pursuing photojournalism. I've already been working for the same newspaper since 2003. I'm pretty much in it now rather than pursuing it.

But I can tell you why so many photojs are attracted to poverty. If you really work in the field, unless you are a big name, then you spend virtually all your time shooting meaningless meetings, ceremonies, high school sports and so on. So to build a portfolio to hopefully get you on to better things you have to shoot meaningful and challenging subject. For most people, they can't hope over to the nearest warzone so they move into poverty. It's a good stettping stone to move up. Most don't do well with it or don't like it and move on to other things. Others are good at it and further their photoj career.

My next project is a months long essay following a local low income family living on the edge.

It's only poverty porn when it's done in a the same manner like the way every photographer does the "water Drop" shot; when they do it just to do it because everyone else does it and do a lot of it with no passion for it. You'll notice the poverty photogs who are successful do nothing but poverty and war almost exclusively. For me that's when it's no longer in the boundaries of "porn."

Every single day I have to shoot those pointless meetings, high school soccer games, ribbon cuttings, and the local lady who makes quits. But my passions lie in medical and poverty photography. To me it's not porn and to my readers it's not meaningless. So I think I'll be fine staying with poverty in the end.

I don't mean to make it sound like I'm attacking you and I know you are just adding your 2 cents from your own experiences, but telling me to watch out because many photojs fall into "poverty porn" and one shouldn't do it if it's not making a difference would be kinda like me going into the thread of a passionate landscape photog here and telling them that it's a waste of time because they'll never be as good as Ansel Adams. See where I'm coming from?

Thanks for all the positive input, everybody.

 

[LuckySo-n-So]

For those who wish to read the article.
Awesome work Dan!

The face of Tent City

 

[newrmdmike]

The article ran yesterday. Since we don't consider Sacramento local(even though it's only 30 minutes away) they ran a feature on me going to tent city rather than a story on tent city itself. A short first person account of the situation and the kind or people there with a photo essay. Kinda odd really; a newspaper doing a feature on it's own employee.

But don't worry. I'm not pursuing photojournalism. I've already been working for the same newspaper since 2003. I'm pretty much in it now rather than pursuing it.

But I can tell you why so many photojs are attracted to poverty. If you really work in the field, unless you are a big name, then you spend virtually all your time shooting meaningless meetings, ceremonies, high school sports and so on. So to build a portfolio to hopefully get you on to better things you have to shoot meaningful and challenging subject. For most people, they can't hope over to the nearest warzone so they move into poverty. It's a good stettping stone to move up. Most don't do well with it or don't like it and move on to other things. Others are good at it and further their photoj career.

My next project is a months long essay following a local low income family living on the edge.

It's only poverty porn when it's done in a the same manner like the way every photographer does the "water Drop" shot; when they do it just to do it because everyone else does it and do a lot of it with no passion for it. You'll notice the poverty photogs who are successful do nothing but poverty and war almost exclusively. For me that's when it's no longer in the boundaries of "porn."

Every single day I have to shoot those pointless meetings, high school soccer games, ribbon cuttings, and the local lady who makes quits. But my passions lie in medical and poverty photography. To me it's not porn and to my readers it's not meaningless. So I think I'll be fine staying with poverty in the end.

I don't mean to make it sound like I'm attacking you and I know you are just adding your 2 cents from your own experiences, but telling me to watch out because many photojs fall into "poverty porn" and one shouldn't do it if it's not making a difference would be kinda like me going into the thread of a passionate landscape photog here and telling them that it's a waste of time because they'll never be as good as Ansel Adams. See where I'm coming from?

Thanks for all the positive input, everybody.

sweet! they look like they printed pretty well?! to your standard? also, didn't mean to make it sound like you were still persuing pj, haah. also, wouldn't have taken it for an attack, and i apologize if i sounded abrasive, military life does that to you.

thanks for posting the article, i really enjoyed seeing the final product. it made all the difference for me to have the account with the images. the conclusions i would have drawn i don't think would have been as intended.

 

[Hooligan Dan]

sweet! they look like they printed pretty well?! to your standard? also, didn't mean to make it sound like you were still persuing pj, haah. also, wouldn't have taken it for an attack, and i apologize if i sounded abrasive, military life does that to you.

thanks for posting the article, i really enjoyed seeing the final product. it made all the difference for me to have the account with the images. the conclusions i would have drawn i don't think would have been as intended.

Thank you. They printed pretty well. Our presses aren't the best for b&w images. They can't handle the broad tonal range. So I had to brighten the shots up a lot and I lost the deep tones in the sky. If you look at the slideshow on my paper's site and compare them to the shots in this thread, you can see the huge difference in the tones. Those shots weren't suppose to be used in the slideshow too, but out computer guy is not the sharpest knife.