Reflection and Abstraction

Last September, whilst wandering around the Santa Barbara waterfront, I made an effort to focus on reflections. I came away with a couple of reflection photographs that were quite mesmerizing.

I had recently worked with one of my coaching clients and he had showed me some of his work, where he took images with intriguing patterns and made mirrored composites. I decided to give the technique a try.

I opened my image in Photoshop, duplicated my layer so I had 4 copies of the image, and then enlarged the canvas (2x height, 2x width). I then used the transform tool to flip the layers so that they mirrored the base layer.

This is what I came up with:

Spectacular, right? I even got the added bonus of an owl in the middle which was a very happy accident.

Spurred on by my success I moved on to another, very different reflection photo.

This was the first version:

I then rotated it, and added a mirrored copy:

What I love most about this series is how the water ripples away from the center and looks like fluttering silk.

I decided to take this one a couple of steps further, mirroring the image again:

And again, this time just doing the opposite of what I did above:

Even several months later, I’m still fascinated by these abstract reflection photographs and how I turned them into something surreal and intriguing. I think they would be stunning printed on metal, as a print with an acrylic face mount, or (if it is possible) printed on silk as a scarf. I really like that last option. Must do some research.

What do you think about this technique and the resulting images? I hope to hear from you in the comments below!