Crank the ISO and watch for the blue cast – my quick guide to photographing street markets

Beads, necklaces and jewellery at a market in Marrakesh provide colour and texture for a close up shot

(Image credit: Future)

When travelling abroad there’s one location that’s almost guaranteed to offer a wealth of photographic opportunities, and that’s the local market. From the Souk Semmarine in Morocco to the Dong Xuan market in Vietnam, the world of bazaars, souks and street markets are bustling with color, texture and character.

There are a number of approaches you can take with your camera, including finding interesting vendors for portrait studies, wide-angle shots to show the scale, and tight telephoto crops to focus on the hustle and bustle.

The other option is to focus on what is being sold, to illustrate the patterns, textures and vibrant colors of foodstuffs, jewellery and fabrics. For this you’ll need to either crop tightly to exclude the surrounding stall and just showcase the items, as in the main image here, or look to compose the image in terms of the shapes and patterns of what’s on offer.

Working in enclosed spaces, it’s often the wide-angle lens that comes into play, but a short telephoto will certainly give you the flexibility to go wide to encompass the whole scene and then zoom in for more individual items. Even in bright, sunny conditions, the stall and goods themselves are likely to be in the shade, so any close up work might require increasing the ISO and using a wider aperture like f/2.8, f/4 or f/5.6 to avoid the shutter speed dropping too low for a handheld shot.

Colorful pots of exotic spics and interesting ingredients make for interesting marketplace shots. (Image credit: Future)

For the wide-angle view, showing the market itself, rather than a specific stall, you want more depth of field, so switch to f/11 or f/16 if there’s a really big area to capture. With bright, overhead sunlight and the stalls in shadows, they might have a blue color cast thanks to the AWB only catering for the sunlight. So, either shoot in RAW so it’s easy to tweak later, or use a manual white balance setting of 6,500-7,000K.

A versatile compact camera can be ideal for travel photography, so here's the best ones around at the moment. Consider taking a drone to fly over the market, if it's safe and legal. These are some to consider. Of course you'll want to show off your photos when you come back, so why not use one of these digital photo frames?

Wendy was the Editor of Digital Photo User for nearly five years, charting the rise of digital cameras and photography from expensive fad to mass market technology. She is a member of the Royal Photographic Society (LRPS) and while originally a Canon film user in the '80s and '90s, went over to the dark side and Nikon with the digital revolution. A second stint in the photography market was at ePHOTOzine, the online photography magazine, and now she's back again as Technique Editor of Digital Camera magazine, the UK's best-selling photography title. She is the author of 13 photography/CGI/Photoshop books, across a range of genres.

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