Buying and Selling in Black and White

Buying and selling. Where to start? Well, if you’re selling, setting your wares out appetisingly is probably the traditional way to go, so my featured photo is of a front window in Betty’s, Harrogate’s well known tea room and bakery.

The soft sell continues inside. But when curiosity prompted us to stick our noses through the door of this jewellers’ in Seoul, we very promply departed, realising this was Not Our Scene. Or budget.

Of course, sometimes shop window and point-of-sale are one and the same, as with this sales van, where all the driver has to do is park up, leave the driver’s cab and pop behind his built in counter.

These days though, shopping can be all about the shopping mall. Clean, cool seductive surroundings are intended to sooth us into opening up our wallets and come prepared to spend, spend, spend. Here’s the Victoria Gate Shopping Centre in Leeds.

Life couldn’t be more different in another modern shopping centre, Mercat dels Encants, Barcelona. Crazily juxtaposed ceiling mirrors reflect the scenes below of bartering, haggling over anything from rolls of cheap fabric to flea market goods that look as if they’ve been around for decades.

My favourite shopiing experiences are often serendipitous. On our way to Scarborough last week, we paused in a small town, Kirkbymoorside, to stretch our legs and have a coffee. It turned out to be market day. And there was someone selling rather exotic mushrooms: some that he’d foraged – others that he’d grown himself. We couldn’t buy as we weren’t going to be home that night. But his enthusiasm had him talking to us for quite a while as he described his wares in detail, even though he knew he wouldn’t make a sale to us that day. He now has two loyal fans who will hunt him down very soon.

Moorside Mushrooms

So what can you tell us in monochrome photos about buying and selling? You may have seen someone shaking hands on a deal. You may have visited a trade warehouse and seen forklift trucks going about their business. You may have visited a cattle market, or an auction. Or you may just like to show us your weekly shop. When you have a post ready to publish (do join in!) please link it back to this post, and to Leanne’s Monochrome Madness page, as without Leanne, there would be no Monochrome Madness.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness

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Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

57 thoughts on “Buying and Selling in Black and White”

    1. This is very odd. I wrote quite a long reply yesterday and I see it hasn’t published, isn’t in drafts …. Sorry! Anyway. What I said was that our visit wasn’t really long enough for us to form any strog views, but that it seemed fairly mixed, socially. In that part of the world, you’re going to be hard put to avoid the huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ crowd altogether. I hope you found That Perfect House!

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  3. For me food has to be in colour, but I do like your photo of Victoria Gate Shopping Centre in Leeds. Those patterns. My cousin once had a coffee shop inside the Victoria Quarter, the fabulous historic mall.

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    1. Oh, many British childen were brought up on Just William books (includng me and mine!). A lovable scamp, always in trouble, with a ghastly girl as the bane of his gang’s lives – one Violet Elizabeth Bott. Not a ‘thing’ in the US?

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  5. I love Betty’s!! I bought our wedding cake from the one in York almost 50 years ago because it was displayed in the window. It was not a traditional wedding cake, it was a cake in the shape of Dougal the Dog!

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  7. I really like B&W photography but not for food. This reminded me of Oliver Sack’s book where he wrote about a man with some kind of acquired brain damage that meant he could only see in black-and-white. So food always looked an unappetising grey.

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    1. Ditto to both your experiences. Though breakfast at Betty’s was a VERY occasional treat when Emily was small and was out at a sleepover. There was a piano player on Sundays. Very civilised xx

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      7. It’s a 3 km to the bus stop. The bus is the school run so one bus in the early morning to town and one bus back in the afternoon. If you feel like travelling with a bunch of unruly school kids

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