The people person

Photographers frequently go to great lengths to capture their images. Some camp on the sides of mountains in the middle of winter, driven by the desire to photograph the first chink of light as it breaks over a remote landscape. Others risk their safety to travel to inhospitable climates in pursuit of rare wildlife. Then there are those who have made their living from photographing war zones, where the risks so often outweigh the rewards. Why is it, then, that the simple act of approaching an ordinary, unthreatening human going about their everyday business, and asking to take their portrait, is enough to strike terror into even the boldest photographer’s heart?

‘Every single one is an absolute nightmare,’ laughs Niall McDiarmid. This, despite him having spent the best part of the past 10 years travelling the length and breadth of Great Britain, stopping people in the street and asking if he can take their picture. We’re chatting over a coffee and croissant in the garden of a Clapham café. Having spent my journey , which was published earlier this year, by the time I get off the train I’m ‘seeing’ his distinctive images everywhere. They are in the young woman wearing the floral trousers who’s standing in a diagonal shaft of light, and in another whose green coat echoes the colour of the passing Southern Railway carriages.