Green Light
Shanghai China
Photo by Brad Rickerby
This little beauty was taken in Shanghai, China. I can tell you two important things about Shanghai right off the bat. 1) It is a long way from New York City (where I was based at the time I created this image), and 2) The people in Shanghai are utterly bemused at the site of a chubby caucasian guy, dripping camera equipment, with a tri-pod and 300 mm f2.8 lens taking a picture of a traffic light. Of all the places I have been, I appreciate the bemusement of the chinese people the most. I felt utterly safe there, more so than any where else. In fact, it has only been in the USA where I have been hassled by passers-by and the police and only in Los Angeles that I have been robbed, Given me China for safety any day.
This is a great picture for stock. First, it illustrates a concept very simply. Go, start, proceed and others such concepts are all shown by this image. Second, it is simple, yet colorful and has what we used to call in the old days, light box appeal. It jumps off the light box at you because of its color and saturation. A third beauty of this image is that it requires no model release and can't be identified with any specific location.
As I mentioned, this images was created with a 300 f2.8 lens mounted on a tri-pod. It has a narrow aperture to isolate the traffic light against a fuzzy bak ground. The image was created on film (Fuji Velvia 50). Finally, to get the slight blur effect, I kicked (very gently, I didn't want to be accused of tri-pod abuse) the leg of the tri-pod during the exposure. I took a number of these images, varying the kick intensity and duration, so I could be sure I got the effect I wanted (remember, it was in the days of film so I couldn't see the images until I had travelled more than 10,000 miles to the lab I trusted.
Please contact me at brad@bradrickerby.com for more info or prints. Cheers.
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