to market

Have you ever been into the fruit, vegetable and flower market in Smithfield before? I hadn’t, until a couple of weeks ago when I went along with Emily of From China Village and Claire, the Informal Florist. I had always been intrigued by the place but a bit nervous of wandering in with my camera in case I wasn’t very well received, but going in there with a regular seemed like the perfect opportunity. I was worried that it was going to be really dark because that’s how it looks when you peer in through the doorways from the streets at the side but what I didn’t know about until I got in were the big windows in the roof, making beautiful pools of soft light.

I’ve been making more of an effort recently to let go of that instinct to make everything pretty and perfect and edit out the mess. I used this as a bit of a test.  The results are maybe quite different to what you’re used to seeing, but it’s natural for a photographer’s style to change over time I think, even if I try this out for a while and then step back but keep an element of it.

I loved the handpainted signage, and the rich colours against the delicate flowers.

I wanted to take it all home with me! As well as the flowers and the building itself, there was all sorts of interesting stuff, with beautiful patterns of light and shadow, just waiting to have their picture taken. The ladies were very patient with me as I grabbed a few shots on our way out…

From there, we headed up to Claire’s place where she showed us some seriously inspiring flower arranging magic, which you can read some more about on my wedding blog…