YouTube chef Bobby Sharma portrait taken by award-winning photographer David Charles
A YouTube star who used to have a pop-up restaurant at a Wakefield pub has had his portrait taken by a photographer who used to have a salon in Tingley.
Bobby Sharma has gathered nearly 1.5 million views on YouTube in his Yorkshire Indian guise, mixing colourful humour with recipes.
He was contacted by photographer David Charles, who first made his name in 1980 with a hairdressers’ in Tingley.
David has photographed high-profile figures and is about to release a coffee table book of portraits featuring the likes of Judi Dench, Sean Bean and Jane McDonald for charity.
Bobby said: “When David got in touch I thought someone was trying to con me, given the people he’s worked with.”
Bobby previously had a pop-up restaurant at the Red Lion in Ossett, which appeared among the finalists in the Wakefield Express Curry House of the Year Awards 2017.
He said: “For a day and half a week’s work we took a lot of top restaurants out of the running.”
He set up the Yorkshire Indian YouTube channel to share recipes and cheer people up at a difficult time.
"I was depressed and I thought ‘actually, I'm strong’ so I looked at TikTok and thought if i can make five people smile, then job done.”
David approached him after looking at recipes online.
He said: “I found him because my passion is cooking and I saw him as a very comedic character and that's what attracted me and I contacted him.
"He's easy to photograph, he went into different characters during the shoot and I felt I brought out the character of Bobby in the shoot.”
David, who has won more than 100 industry awards, added: “When I photograph people it is getting the essence of the person – sitting down for an hour or half an hour and finding out who they really are.”
He chose York Against Cancer as his charity for his book, which is due out in December.
He himself is a cancer survivor having been diagnosed on two separate occasions.
The Tingley salon was sold over concerns that if he became ill again it would be difficult for his wife to run alone.
Search Yorkshire Indian on YouTube or visit www.davidcharles.com.