Navajo Blanket

I have often heard that photographers should familiarize themselves with a location before they go out for a photoshoot. It pays to know your surroundings and what to expect out of them. I have made full use of that knowledge in testing new things in photography. I have even done a three-part mini-project featuring the fall colors in my neighborhood park, Copperfield Nature Trail. Parts 1, 2, and 3 are in those links.

This week, when I received my photography class assignment, I knew precisely where to go to get my primary photos. I bike several trails around the Austin area. The pedestrian bridge where I made the main photo for the assignment is on my favorite trail, Southern Walnut Creek. Just last week, for example, I had used the bridge and saw the shadows the sun was casting late afternoon. It was the place to use for the assignment.

I went back on Tuesday at that same time and set up my camera and tripod. I did several photos using a zoom lens and also a super-wide lens. The first two shots here were made with the zoom lens. The last photo was with the super-wide lens. Now, having never tried the mirror image technique described in the class notes and video, I had no idea what I was getting into, certainly. Wow, was it fun! I ended up creating several mirror images and having a hard time deciding which to submit for the class.

In this post, you have three preferred mirror images I created from a single shot. In the first photo, if you draw cross lines right in the middle of the images both vertically and horizontally, you will see the original image in the upper-left corner. From there, I flipped it down horizontally to create the bottom “reflection.” Then, from the image created, it was just a matter of flipping it right vertically to create the mirror image on the right side of the frame. I loved the shadows and lines presented in that photo. They are bold and hold your eyes in the center of the frame. There’s a certain 3D effect with those lines, which is emphasized by the tunnel view.

The second photo also emphasizes its 3D aspect, but it looks more like a well on both sides of the image. The second image is the one I submitted to the assignment because the image needed to be shot during the week of the assignment. To obtain the effects, I did rotate the main image a bit. The “bottom of the wells” or the end of the tunnels shows the angle I used. That gave the photo a stronger depth feeling, especially because of the curved center. In both of these photos, the colors and designs reminded me of Navajo blanket patterns. For this second image, the original photo is in the upper-right corner. I then flipped it down vertically and finally flipped it left horizontally to create the left-hand side mirror image.

The third shot above was made with my super-wide lens. The location was basically the same as the first photo, but the primary image for the design appears in the lower-left corner. The process was similar, but the result was quite different. Gone are the blanket patterns. This photo looks more like a grid or something out of the novel The Great Gatsby poster. It is like ironworks or bars on a window.

I was also lucky that there were perfect blue skies that afternoon. One thing I am very proud of is that there was no cropping whatsoever in the first and third images. For the second photo, in order to obtain the angles, I had to do some minor cropping because of the image rotation. You can see the original single image for that photo in the upper-right corner. For editing, I used Photoshop to create the mirror images. Then, in the Lightroom Classic basic panel, I did overall adjustments and added a few masks to adjust localized shadows, highlights, and colors, mainly on the ground and bridge rails.