At the Farmers Market

by Joseph T. Sinclair

I’ve always had an attrac­tion to farm­ers mar­kets. They’re pleas­ant. They’re a touch of the bucol­ic in the urban area. They have good weath­er. (One does­n’t usu­al­ly go to the farm­ers mar­ket if the weath­er is bad.) They have food. And they make fun pho­to ops. Hey, what else do you want?

There are sev­er­al things that make them good pho­to ops. First, they’re col­or­ful and often have an inter­est­ing vari­ety of food. Sec­ond, you prob­a­bly don’t think to take your cam­era to the farm­ers mar­ket. But pre­sum­ably, you always have your phone with you. That makes a farm­ers mar­ket a nat­ur­al for phone cam­era photography.

Third, they make an ide­al place for street pho­tog­ra­phy. What do I mean by street pho­tog­ra­phy? The pros call going out and walk­ing through a neigh­bor­hood while tak­ing pho­tos of peo­ple, street pho­tog­ra­phy. Pros often find this awk­ward, as some peo­ple do not want their pho­tos tak­en. They nor­mal­ly use a small incon­spic­u­ous cam­era instead of a three-pound pro­fes­sion­al camera.

But at a farm­ers mar­ket, street pho­tog­ra­phy is a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent. The farm­ers mar­ket is more or less an ultra-pub­lic place and event. Few peo­ple, if any at all, will object to hav­ing their pho­tos tak­en by some­one wan­der­ing through the farm­ers mar­ket and casu­al­ly tak­ing pho­tos. This will not get you pho­tos show­ing peo­ple in their nat­ur­al habi­tat. Nonethe­less, you will be able to cap­ture pho­tos that show emo­tions and char­ac­ter as peo­ple engage in their human antics.

The pho­tos in this arti­cle were tak­en at the San Fran­cis­co fer­ry build­ing which has a per­ma­nent insti­tu­tion­al­ize farm­ers mar­ket indoors. In addi­tion, it has an out­door farm­ers mar­ket once a week to sup­ple­ment the one indoors. This is one of my favorite places to take pho­tos. It’s just plain fun, and I also get to pur­chase and eat some good food.

You can take all kinds of shots at a farm­ers mar­ket: panora­mas, close-ups, odd angles, peo­ple, food, geo­met­rics (e.g., toma­toes in neat rows), signs, and some­times unusu­al vehi­cles. A few years ago before I had a phone cam­era, I vis­it­ed a farm­ers mar­ket in Cha­monix, France. There was a van at the farm­ers mar­ket with slid­ing pan­els that revealed the entire left side of the van was cov­ered with rotis­series com­plete with rotat­ing roast­ing chick­ens that smelled ter­rif­ic. Since farm­ers mar­kets can be lucra­tive for ven­dors, you nev­er know what you might see at a farm­ers mar­ket regard­ing mak­ing pro­duce avail­able to the public.

A bonus at some farm­ers mar­kets is the accom­pa­ni­ment of a crafts show. Local arti­sans take advan­tage of a farm­ers mar­ket to sell their wares along with the farm­ers. That pro­vides you with an addi­tion­al kind of pho­to op. Some­times you find items that are not only remark­able but also unique, good sub­jects for a pho­to op.

Phone cam­eras are all about tak­ing attrac­tive pho­tographs in fun places. A farm­ers mar­ket, par­tic­u­lar­ly a large farm­ers mar­ket with plen­ty of vari­ety, is a great place to shoot. Vis­it a farm­ers mar­ket in your area and try your hand at get­ting some col­or­ful photographs.