A Walk Through The Market

Fish for sale in Nanmen Market, Taipei.

Traditional markets in Asia are one of my favorite photographic subjects as a travel photographer. The color, the exotic food, the hustle, the smells and sounds. While a photograph can’t really convey smell, it can show the other factors, although sounds needs a little dive into the world of multimedia to pull off. A couple of days ago I found myself with a spare hour or so as I traveled about town to meet with some private photography students and decided to duck into one of Taipei’s oldest markets, Nanmen Market. Generally you need to get to these traditional wet markets early. The best meat and freshest vegetables go quick so if you’re much later than 8am or so, you’ll miss all the excitement. Get down there at dawn if you’re really serious about markets. For me this week, I didn’t specifically set out to photograph the market and when I arrived close to noon, things were very quiet. Which makes it easy to move around but with almost no customers and most of the vendors eating lunch, there wasn’t a lot of people photography to be done. Still, photographing market food is always fun so here’s a little sampling of some of the things you could expect to see.

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