Valentine’s Day, like Mothers Day, Easter, and Christmas, is a special time for the Flower Market each and every year. For business, these set-piece occasions are absolutely critical and the Market never disappoints, perennially coming to life with an array of colours and character that you just don’t get anywhere else.

The big difference with Valentine’s Day of course is that one colour dominates and as February 14th approaches, it is RED, RED, RED. Roses are [mainly] red, as we all know, but the undisputed colour of love abounds in plants, blow-up hearts, ribbons and all manner of beautiful foliage.

It’s a great time to be a cameraman, of course. With the predominant redness of the occasion constantly in mind, my eye, and camera are professionally drawn to anything and everything that says ‘It’s Valentine’s Day’ in the Market.

In the first of this issue’s images, the BBC weather presenter Carol Kirkwood is spotted in amongst the red roses - by herself, the picture would be all about Carol, but getting the TV camera in picture out of focus on the left side of my own camera frame makes sense of the story of Carol being at New Covent Garden to film her live Valentine’s Day TV weather forecast segments. TV broadcasters flock to the Market on the day of love – it fills their programmes with a sense of joy, as it does my lens.

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The rest of the photos show different aspects of Valentine’s Day over the years. The making-up of red rose bouquets – whether by the trolley-load or in more individual designs, always creates an evocative image, especially the shot of Kim never once stopping her work while being snapped. And the spontaneous picture of Julie and Tom smiling at the camera, with the giveaway sign of an “I Love You” heart balloon.

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Graeme and Mo are busy fulfilling orders, an anxious look at the gas bottle being used to inflate plastic hearts showing an unsung part of the service the Flower Market ‘team’ provides to clients otherwise focused on buying thousands and thousands of stock red roses. So many of the photos I take are enhanced by the quality of the flowers in frame – in this instance the singular rose and the mini forest of roses. Again – I really don’t think you’d find the uniformity of quality anywhere else.

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And one for my friends, the wholesalers at the end – it’s always fantastic to capture that “All Sold” notice across buckets of roses!

For more than 50 years and now 50 years in Nine Elms, I’ve been keeping the feeling of Valentine’s Day within my camera frame and the Market allows me to do that without the fear of non-Valentine visual distraction.