Sevenoaks Behind the Counter
In 2020 author Victoria Granville and Photographer Roger Lee published the book Sevenoaks in a Time of Change, This book was a snapshot of Sevenoaks and its people in 2020, 900 years after the town was first mentioned in history, and included images of many of the businesses in the town.
This project is a snapshot of the shopkeepers and traders, the people working and trading in the town in the spring of 2024
It was inspired by an image taken by chance on a street photography workshop that I was running in 2023, Nick in the COOK store (see above)
Shops and traders are the beating heart of any town, but how often do we think of the people who make this happen on a daily basis?
The Sevenoaks Behind the Counter project explores the 100+ traders and shops that trade in the center of the town. Previous projects have recorded the outsides of some of these businesses. In the Behind the Counter project, I'm exploring the people behind the shopfronts and market stalls.
I will be photographing shops and traders during May and June 2024. Some images will be exhibited at the Anchor, in London Road from Saturday 22nd June as part of the Sevenoaks Summer Festival.
Pictures from this project will be included in the Kalidoscope exhibition "Sevenoaks at Work" and the book that will consist of images of all the shops and traders participating in the project. If you want further details or would like to participate, drop me an email at paul@paulburgess.photography
Technical Stuff
For those who are interested, all the images were taken with my Fujifilm X100V camera. The X100V has an extremely sharp fixed focus 23mm f2.0 lens, which ensures a consistent perspective across all of the images. I used an aperture of f4.0 so that the depth of focus on all of the images was the same.
Most of the images were taken with available lighting in the shops, but for some situations, where the shop lighting was unsuitable, I used a Godox TT685 flashgun off-camera with a Magmod dome diffuser and a Godox XPro-F controller
