Shanghai night with phantoms
Terry Baker
printed on Giclée Epson Semi-Gloss
Photograph taken on East Nanjing Road, Shanghai, in 2006. The road is packed on both sides with shops of every size and description, from large shopping malls to speciality boutiques. It seems there is nothing that cannot be bought in this shoppers paradise, hence the hoards of people that frequent this ‘place of plenty’. The intention in this image was to capture the dazzling displays of lights carpeting the shop fronts and to reveal the fleeting traces of the shoppers, wandering like ghosts, in the Shanghai night. To this end the camera was fixed on a tripod and a long exposure given to properly record the brightly lit buildings, and a flash-gun was used on rear-curtain sync to illuminate the blurred shadows of people and reveal these vague phantoms of the night to be no more than enthusiastic shoppers.
