Reflections and Water

Reflections are everywhere. Almost every photograph and painting contains some areas of reflection, even if it is unintentional or out of focus. There are many ways of portraying reflection, of course when painting it is very easy to distort a reflection to a desired shape or image, however photographers also have some power in what they can reflect by using angles and light to change what can be seen in a reflection.

I found this image on noupe.com. Though this image does not to relate to our project, I thought it was a simple yet clever example of using reflection to recreate a different idea about an image. It also works literally, as the puzzle pieces 'me' and 'you' have physically been joined together to create a 'we', which the mirror reflects from the word 'me'. 

The Nave of Ely Cathedral (a very similar design to the pinhole photograph we looked at at the beginning of the project) has a large mirror running down the middle of the building, allowing guests to view the detain of the ceiling without straining their necks. Josh Dalklin really captures the exact reflection and symmetry of the building, using the stain glass window in the middld of the photograph as his centre focus point.   

Phil Douglis uses water to portray a certain reflection. He comments on this photograph saying:

"Because reflections are a form of abstraction, we are free are to orient our images in any way we wish. In this case, I turned the reflected image upside down, implying that the dark pattern flowing from a corner is smoke from a chimney, which morphs the scene into an inverted medieval cityscape."

The use of the word 'free' is a very interesting one, and I like the context he has used it in. Of course we are free to orient any image in whatever way we wish, however by using reflection in ones work, it does give one more lee-way to invent and imagine, as it easier to believe a distorted reflection as it is never expected to be an exact replica of the original object.

'Reflection in Water' (above) is the second of a series of five reflection photographs. I find his comment about the piece very interesting, as he says:

"the motion in the water, created by our moving barge, stretches and bends the windmill until it becomes whimsically surreal. It stimulates the imagination, and calls out for attention."

'Stimulating the imagination' is one of our goals for this project, as the theme mystical creatures requires some sort  imagine to believe the photo. With this photo, you can tell it is a windmill even though it has been very much distorted by the moving water, and if it actually showed the real windmill in the image, it might be more obvious just how different the shape of the building is to the original.

After looking at these examples reflection, we have decided that we would like to continue this theme, as it is a very interesting one, and works very well with the idea of imagination which feeds our other theme of mystical creatures and ghosts. We really like some of our photos which we have already edited, and are going to play around with more images to see how broad a range of photographs we can collect.

REFLECTIONS ALSO PORTRAY AN IMAGE UPSIDE DOWN BACK TO FRONT, EXACTLY THE SAME AS A PINHOLE CAMERA.