I don’t consider myself to be primarily any specific species of photographer. I shoot sports and love it. I shoot landscapes and love it. I shoot birds and wildlife, nature and urban scenes and I enjoy them all. I’m not a portrait photographer and I’m too old to be shooting weddings, but I have done, and I’ve enjoyed the experience. And when I’m in a new city or revisiting old haunts, then I’ll try some street photography.
Street photography is generally associated with black and white shots and I’ve taken my fair share of those. I’ve used black and white when I want to focus purely on the emotion within a scene without any distractions. But sometimes the shot just seems to work in colour, it’s more true to life in the sense that it matches my original vision. What I am trying to achieve in this set of images is not simply the emotional content of the scene, in which case I would probably have opted for black and white, but the realistic representation of what I saw when I took the pictures.
These shots combine the location and the people. The subject matter is not just the location, nor is it just the people, it’s both. The shots are all taken in and around Bury Market; without the people the locations would be empty, they wouldn’t work. It’s the people who bring this unique market to life, picking up their shopping and stopping for a well-deserved cup of tea and snack, as well as chat to their companions.
Chris McPhee - Photographer 