I've found something I'm really passionate about!

Yeah, it's exciting. It's been a long while since I've been really passionate. I love it.I'm really, really passionate about giving the homeless and needy a good name. I'm going to do a series of photography on urban life, specifically homelessness and poverty. It'll give me much needed practice with portraiture as a bonus. :)I get really upset when I go to volunteer to feed the needy because we're helping, we're supposed to be accepting and kind. I volunteer for churches, even though I'm not a church-goer; it's easy to volunteer with them. Every time I volunteer, there's a paranoid speech about keeping the children safe or some shit. They church-going do-gooders are so convinced that every needy person is a raging alcoholic, and a drug addict, and is going to rape the children. Last time I volunteered, a church-goer cracked jokes about how useless the homeless are. I'm so upset at the paranoia and discrimination.The homeless/needy mean a whole hell of a lot to me. Every time I go into the city, I have a wonderful conversation with at least one needy person. They're great people, for the most part. Plus, they're partially responsible for keeping me alive. All those conversations I had with the needy made me feel like I was needed for something. I know I'm speaking for every homeless/needy person, and I know that's impossible, as I don't know every single one. But almost all of the homeless/needy I've run into have been great to me.So I'm doing this series, and I hope that the photographs turn out beautiful. Scratch that; I'm going to work my ass off to make them beautiful, so that I can enter them in contests, or get them into the community somehow. When they're into the community, I hope that they'll have a similar effect to the effect that Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" had on the community. Where Lange's photograph made the nation realize that migrant workers were more than just "damn Okies" (yes, I've just read The Grapes of  Wrath), I hope my series will make the church-going, dead-fish-handshake giving, paranoid, stay-at-home mother, rich church-goers realize that the homeless are not all alcoholic, drug-addicted, rapists bent on hurting everyone. Of course the effect will be smaller, but if I can just make some people realize that maybe, just maybe, the homeless are real people, just like them, I'll be happy.I have a lot of hope, I know. I'm only seventeen and this is a lot to hope for. After all, I'm just a stupid teenager. What do I know about life, right? Bear with me. I'm passionate, and I'm confident I can do something worthwhile. It's all the confidence I have.