Photo of the week: Cutting cloth at Turpan market

This photograph was taken in the market at Turpan in China’s Xinjiang province. I’d wondered back and forth past this same fabric seller two or three times in the days that I was there trying to get this shot. It was a popular shop and it opened out onto the street and the fabrics were everywhere. It was interesting to watch the women inspecting the silks and to see the young Uyghur girl measure out and cut the material with her mother for the customers.

I’d taken quite a few shots and each time I thought I’d got the shot I was after, but when I checked later I’d find that they were blurred. It was a difficult subject as the shop front was in shadow and hard to shoot without hand-shake problems. Eventually I got this shot – not technically perfect, but just the moment I was trying to capture.