Taken on a Sunday afternoon in London on a bitterly cold winter’s day. We don’t seem to have winters like that any more, but in spite of the freezing weather, Camden Town was bustling. We had wandered around aimlessly for an hour or so and nothing had caught my eye. I could feel a familiar sense of rising panic. What if I didn’t take anything decent that day? What if I never took anything decent ever again? We stopped for lunch and I contemplated our decision to have a Chinese from one of the outdoor stalls. The benches were half empty and no wonder… with our breath freezing in the air around us. I sat and watched people passing by. The thought of trying to capture them on film seemed daunting. After lunch, we tried one of the indoor markets – mostly full of gear that I remember from the 1960s. Scary thought! We moved back outside and suddenly I spotted the low sun on an old brick wall and the potential for interesting shadows.
With one shot taken, I started to see photographs everywhere. It often happens like that and I have no idea why. The next image was taken of a couple passing by on a footpath next to the river. I love the mixture of old and new buildings. The line of the rails that leads your eye into the scene from the right and then the arch that frames it all.
The final one wasn’t scanned with the others and the negative has sat for years in my ring binder in the old filing cabinet. Recently I had one last check to see if anything had been missed. Good thing too as this one and a few others were found and scanned. I remember at the time – the two ladies so deep in conversation that they didn’t know their photograph was being taken. Only the dog realised what was going on.
