Fine Art Color Cityscape Urban Photograph by Brad Rickerby - Bangkok

Motorcyclists - Bangkok, Thailand

Photo by Brad Rickerby

Limited Edition Fine Art Prints Available

This image deserves to be seen much, much larger. Alas, there is only a certain amount of space on this page. I choose this image to talk about next because we have, over the last several images, been on a discussion on what works best as a stock photo. This image has sold many times as a Rights Managed image through Getty, netting in the thousands of dollars. I guess that makes it a successful stock image, although it clearly violates one of the major principles of stock photography, simplicity. This image is not simple. It is complicated. In fact it is more like an abstract or Impressionist painting than it is a photograph. And that is why it works. The image gives you an impression of what a scene is like. It is as if you squinted your eyes to eliminate detail (which is, in fact, how many of the Impressionist painters painted).

What you are left with when you just have an impression of the scene is a photograph that delivers concepts, and that is key for stock photo sales. In the first place, when you combine this image with its location, Bangkok, Thailand you get a real story about that location. The picture tells you that Bangkok is exciting and fast-paced and dynamic. So the image works as a journalistic travel photo. Take away the location and you just have motorcycles speeding by. You have an illustration of the concepts of speed, motion, fast, an adrenaline rush and movement. All those concepts being illustrated leads to a lot of income.

To create an image like this you really have to look for backgrounds and imagine how they will look when you move the camera across them creating a blur. A single traffic light or a couple of street lights is not going to suffice to create this image. Look for lots and lots of lights (and, of course, a lot of traffic). In this case there were car headlights, neon signs, traffic signals, street lamps and a bridge with more lights on top. Having found the background, creating the image becomes a matter of just panning with the motorcycles so they are clear against the blurred background. Easy? Not at all. I spent all night creating this image. It takes a lot of repetition to get the pieces to all fall into place.

The image was created at f 4.0 at 4/10ths of a second. The ISO was 200 and the lens, a 70 mm.