I've had this mirror idea in my head for a few months now. Finally, I found a day and an awesome subject, my friend Amy, to go out to the beach and work with this new concept. This was more of an experimental shoot to tinker around with lighting and composition a bit.
Originally, I was inspired by a landscape photographer named Murray Fredericks. I came across his work and really loved what he was doing with mirrors. He would bring a giant mirror out into the desert salt flats and photograph the sunsets. His images had an abstract look which I loved and thought about integrating it into my style of photography.
I love doing landscape photography (check out my other website here) but as I also love shooting portraiture. So why not meld both of these together for this idea? The cool thing is, I had this vintage mirror just sitting in my garage which was perfect for the occasion. I polished it up and we lugged it down the beach to a quiet and more spacious part of Balboa Peninsula. A few onlookers were quite perplexed with whatever we were doing. Apparently, it looked like we were setting up a television out on the beach (hey another good idea!). The sky was really clear that evening so once the sun went down it was a nice blue which complemented Amy's pink dress quite well. The vintage frame also matched her elegant look. We even had some mist roll in and fog up the mirror which gave us a cool painterly effect of Amy's reflection in the mirror. Each photoshoot is almost certain to have some surprises which in most cases are often challenges at first, but often lead to some serendipity.
I also included a time lapse video at the end of this post where you can see all the behind the scenes action for our photoshoot. Enjoy!
Here's the first go at my Mirror Mirror concept.