Christmastime in Les Halles outside the Baltard pavilions on a damp Saturday morning in December. It is the day of the Christmas flower market held in a covered through road next to the fresh fish pavilion - "le pavillon de la maree", or "le pavillon des poissons". Christmastime is a big buying time and crowds of people are milling around or queueing up beyond the barrier waiting to be allowed in to buy flowers and Christmas greenery. A policeman who would be from a brigade of the commissariat des Halles Centrales is controlling the fenced off entrance to the market. In the foreground two men are passing the time talking. There is a grey winter light and photographer Harold Chapman recalls that... "the light is so weak it is very difficult to hold the camera vertically. I would practise for ages. I could never get a good sharp picture - I would be out of breath if I took too many vertical pictures. It was a strain, a feat for me to hold the camera steady - but that is only in bad light." The pavilions were made of iron, brick, wood and glass. Inside the covered through road is the exposed iron framework of cast and wrought iron. In the carreau forain in Rue Rambuteau, Quartier des Halles, 1er arrondissement, Right Bank, Paris, France, circa 1960s.