The task was to find an emissive light source, take a picture, and compare the qualities with projected images.
I chose my light source when randomly walking around night Shanghai and crossing the 3123rd street that day. The act of crossing itself is a spectacle of emissive lights, starting from the traffic signals for pedestrians as well as for cars, to the omnipresent neon and LED advertisements. However, the 3123rd street presented an additional light source in the middle of the street, right below an elevated highway.
Unfortunately, there is not a particular visible light source, however, the scene just caught my attention to the extent I could not let this pass. I really liked the colour, somewhere between purple and blue, which are both colours associated with dark and night. For instance, purple neon is the choice for establishments, that thrive at night (not limited to bars in Shanghai) and darker blue approaches the night black, which is never achieved in a light-polluted agglomeration such as Shanghai.
When combined with the environment – the mystic, seemingly neverending, wide, spacious road – the light creates a scene immediately evoking night illegal street racing. As a person, who grew up on Need for Speed series, I hope this is a general association.
When compared to the projected images from the last week, couple of things are apparent. Firstly, neon lights produce a much broader spectrum of colour – often with maximal brightness in the middle of the source approaching white and the becoming gradually blue and darker blue. Possible through the reflection in the road surface and/or with the combination of the street lamps, purple tones are also achieved.
Secondly, here the neon/LED are the actual light generators whereas with projections the generator could be as far as tens of meters. This fact makes the light more physical rather than virtually created.
When doing a brief research, I have realized that the example I used leads to the famous spectacular images such as the following.
My second inspiration that I decided against in the end was this synthesis of modern and traditional.
