Photographing Castro.

Not the communist leader. As interesting as that would be, I think the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco tops all. Known for being basically the premier gay and lesbian neighborhood in the world, the Castro district is interesting to say the least. Earlier this semester I was given the assignment to photograph the, uh, colorful neighborhood and was challenged to really try and capture the real Castro-- The castro through my eyes. I spent the next two days walking the streets of Castro and trying to get an essence of the hood.

DAY ONE

If I have a couple of days to shoot an assignment, I will usually just walk and observe the first day and sort of shoot what I see. My focus on these assignments is never to get the shots on the first day.

It's not all that difficult to know when you've entered the neighborhood. Rainbow flags adorn every lamp post, window sill, car bumper, etc. There were long stretches of wall covered in colorful murals of the leaders of the gay rights movement thoughout the years, and it seemed as if every storefront had some sort of homoerotic paraphernalia adorning their displays.

But the interesting thing, to me, was the vast amount of homeless people there. Everywhere I turned there was a trashbag clad shopping cart being toted around by these dingy, big bearded men in tattered clothes. After day one, I decided that I would return in the morning and do some "environmental portraits" of some of the street keepers of the Castro.

DAY TWO

I woke up at 6:30 the following morning to track down some of the characters that I had come across the previous day. The plan was to take a journalistic approach to the whole shoot, and try to take some really hard-hitting photos that would make my class weap and run to sign up to volunteer at the nearest soup kitchen.
I arrived at Castro and Market at 7:30 and noticed that there wasn't a soul on the streets. Great. I thought I had caught them all when they were sleeping so I decided to find the nearest coffee shop and wait until I saw some sort of activity in these vacant streets. As I turned the corner into the coffee shop, I hear this raspy voice to my left. "uh, you know, uh... I wouldn't be terribly offended if you asked to take my picture...". As I turned around, I saw the man behind the voice.

I kindly obliged and raised my Nikon. As soon as my eyes disappeared behind the viewfinder, he started to sing, "A yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" over, and over, and over again with his eyes closed. But oddly enough, I think the picture here works. the squinting eyes and puckered lips make for a very interesting portrait.

As the day progressed I realized that not everybody was as friendly as this man here... I was followed for 4 blocks, yelled at, hit on... but none of these were from the 'vagrants'. Any and all opposition to me being there with my camera, trying to make a neighborhood look beautiful and appealing was from the fa... inhabitants of the said neighborhood. Anyway, enough with the mini-rant. enjoy the pictures.