On Monday and Tuesday of the first week, I sent out emails to contacts. I heard back from all but two which was great. The first interview I did was with Jim Stewart of First Church Shelter. Though I was very happy with the interview it was much different from my last one. In the first interview, I asked him a list of questions that I had prepared. I photographed the shelter and later went back to take a portrait of him. These first photos were very literal and were meant to give context for the article. While this is good, I wasn’t thinking too much about things like shapes and light when I took them. As I did more and more interviews, I was more familiar with what I wanted to know and I let the conversation flow more. I asked questions that came to me based on what we were talking about at the time. I think this is a much more effective way to interview people.

In terms of interviewing people on the street, it was scary at first but I tried to make people feel comfortable and I had some good conversations. I really enjoyed meeting strangers who I never would have come into contact with had I not been doing this project. Everyday I would write up the interviews and pick out quotes that I liked. In terms of photography, I learned to take more pictures, “work” a situation, and look for interesting shapes and nice light. I wanted the picture to tell more of a story based on how I chose to take it. Starting on Wednesday of the second week I started outlining my article and filtering through the tons of information that I had. Thursday and Friday morning was a whirlwind of writing the article. I ended up staying up really late on Thursday night to finish it.

At first, I wasn’t sure where to go with the article. I didn’t know whether to use it to simply inform people, to talk about the stereotypical image of a homeless person and what the real situation is, or to tell the individual stories of the people I had talked to. I ended up doing a combination of the three, but really focusing on the individual stories. My goal was to write about things that I had only learned from the interviews and that only I could talk about from those experiences. I didn’t want to include too many stats or things people could find out for themselves on the internet.