Every street photographer in the south east shoots the same five London markets. Almost nobody shoots the working markets thirty minutes up the line, which means the frames you make in Hitchin will not look like anyone else's.

Hitchin is one of England's old market towns and it still behaves like one. The market is not a curated food-hall experience: it is fruit and veg called out by weight, tools, haberdashery, phone cases and antiques, run by traders who set up in the dark and know their regulars by name. The setting does half the compositional work — stalls pitched in the churchyard with St Mary's directly behind, and the River Hiz running along the edge.

6am to 8am is setup: vans reversing down narrow lanes, tarpaulins going up, cash floats counted in fingerless gloves. Winter setup happens in full dark under stall lights — the best atmosphere of the week.

Mid-morning is trade: the calling, the weighing, the pensioners with trolleys who have shopped here for fifty years. Work tight at 35mm or 50mm equivalent; the aisles are narrow and the covered stalls create pools of shadow and light that reward careful exposure — meter for the lit produce and let the underside of the canopies go dark.

Friday adds the antiques and collectables stalls: object still lifes, dealers examining silver, hands and magnifying glasses.

The churchyard gives you something London markets cannot: a medieval church as backdrop, and the contrast of market clutter against it. Rain is not a reason to stay home — the covered stalls keep trade going and umbrellas, wet cobbles and steam from the tea van improve every frame.

A small-town market is not Brick Lane. You will be noticed, and the same traders will be there next week — so play the long game. Buy your breakfast there, chat, and be straightforward about what you are doing if anyone asks. After two or three visits you become part of the furniture and the market opens up to you completely. This is the single biggest photographic advantage a local market has over a famous one: you can build the kind of access street photographers in tourist locations never get.