How to photograph people in Markets and squares

Part two of "top places for people photography"

At the market near agadir morocco Canon 1Ds mark3 16-35mm at 16mm F/5.6 1/60

Markets and squares anywhere are great place to capture human dynamic, sounds and voices, colors and smells, diverse behaviors and emotions and thus are to be the first to be mentioned as top places for people photography.

In most of the cities in the world you will find a local or regional market. In some cases you have to check in advance the specific days these market are open.

My first recommendation to you before travel to any market or square out of your country is to make your try and error in your own home town market.

• Try to understand the dynamics, the intense
• How to communicate – it will be much easier in your mother tongue, and with someone that share with you the same culture
• Try your preferences – shoot under shade and fluorescent light, try to play with your WB, how to handle low light with steady state in very crowded place.
• How do you feel about wide angle picture? Do you find these lens distortions distractive or adding to the picture? How about portrait and candid with telephoto pictures? Its all about your intuition and felling do you like it or not.

After some exercises and training you feel that you are ready to the real thing. Before packing your gears and suitcase and travel here some things to be aware before getting into field:

• Understand the structure of the market – selling fruits and vegetables, butchers, food court, peddlers, artists such as street dancers, magicians etc. walk, just walk through the alleys, don't take a pictures. Learn the structure, feel the dynamic, smell the smells and try to dissolve within the crowd.

• Where to start – by understanding the structure, you get first insight what to expect for.  Try to look for best location that best light by day light and not fluorescent which is the most common light within the markets. The places that don’t have day or natural light can be accessed in later stage.
• When to come? Then try to plan by hours – which day or what are the hours this market is open? Which hour is the most hectic? If you intend to photograph the artists in that specific market, ask about their shows' hours.

Which lens to use?

As you can see in most of my pictures I use my wide lens on full frame body. In some cases I use either my portrait lens or my zoom telephoto. You should have your own preference but you have to understand the advantages and disadvantages of each one of these attitude.

The pictures in the above you can see the use of wide angle lens. It gives you the feeling that I was part of the scene.

In the table below I try to describe the main differences between the lens, which I hope will increase your awareness to the specific scene and hot to capture best scene with people. This table is a summary and adaptation materials from a photography trip that I had with Eli atias.

Comparison of wide angle and telephoto lenses
Lens Type	Super wide (~16mm-35mm)	Telephoto (>85mm)
Depth of filed	Almost unlimited – you can use F/2.8 and in most of the cases that your subject close to your lens more than 40cm and get sharp frame across.	Very limited. In most of the cases you will have to use F that is higher than 16 in order to have significant depth of field
Close to the subject	Have to be very close	Can be far from the subject
Perspective	Ratio between big to small is significant. Converging of lines that creates perspective	Strait lines. No convergence of lines. Same size for people in the background and foreground
Foreground and background	Enable to describe relation between the subject in the foreground and the background	Enable you to isolate the person from its background
Disadvantages	Distortions in the corners of the frame. In some cases skew the people in the photo.
When is it recommended to use in crowded places like markets and squares?	·  In a relatively isolated scene ·  When you want to describe the overall environment ·  When there is a lot to tell ·  When you can approach and have good interaction with the subject	·      When you want to focus on small part of the scene ·      When you do prefer to be de attached  from the scene ·      When you don’t have access to the scene ·      In low light, and you need speed on the expanse of the shutter, and you care less about the background

The following picture, was taken by Canon 50mm F/1.2 on D50 (cropped frame=equal to 75m) compare it with the about 2 frames and try to understand what are the differences.