Homeless Haiku

Homeless Haiku, originally uploaded by Cocoabiscuit.

Garden within the Forbidden City, Beijing, China

Men line benches
Grayjing fog
Becomes a pillow

All through Beijing we found men lying on park benches sound asleep. This seemed rather odd given how tidy everything was in general and how the poor were kept from view. There was even an orderliness to it as each building had only one sleeping homeless man. This photo represents so much about Beijing-- the sleeping man in a t-shirt on the porch of a centuries old building, the gray sky full of pollution that locals referred to as "weather", and the murky green water below. There's an illusion of wealth on the avenue with modern skyscrapers yet these random homeless men who had come into town for day labor jobs. The illusion of progress yet most days having sky filled with pollution so dense that the sun shining brightly above was mostly blocked out.
This photo uses HDR technique from one RAW image to bring out details in otherwise poor lighting: f4.5, 1/125 sec, ISO 250