Hard to believe there can be beauty in a thing where twenty-seven residents were left homeless, and looking for a place to live at Christmas.

My job was not to judge myself for shooting this, but to pull the strongest visuals possible to tell the story in the best way! Sometimes that can interfere with what you capture behind the lens, but in this case it was one of the homeless residents that led me to the place I went in my mind, to beat that this time. I overheard him say “wow, look at that, it’s so beautiful,” referring to the top photo. It did my heart good to hear this from someone who had just lost everything they owned, and could still see the beauty of it all!

I was shooting from the front, on the sunny side, when I had a safe shot, started wondering through the masses of firetrucks, residents, people moving in a mad frantic to save what was left of their personal belongings. Made it to the dark side………..

……it was like the hotel California, or the gates of hell, and although the lights were on, no one was home. Well on it’s way to being a pile of charred ash, it was mostly members only, that saw the beauty in the destruction!