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!
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Beautiful images, love the abstract effects
Thanks so much, Pauline!
Those turned out very cool!! Maybe you can do a class on it! I agree metal or acrylic would really show these off.
excellent travail,puis je faire la même chose avec Luminar 4 ?
Hi JEAN-FRANÇOIS – I’m glad you like the result! You can create a similar effect in Luminar 4 by adding your image four times as a new image layer, and then using the free transform tool to flip, resize and place each side of the reflection.
Oh my gosh Angela!!! AMAZING IMAGES! Truly original one of kind efforts. You go girl!!!!
Thank you so much, Carole!!