This is one of the shots I thought about submitting for our Nov theme. It was my attempt at a mirage.
At first glance, my daughter thought it was a zoomed out black and white photo taken at the beach. She squinted her face and asked me what I had photographed. I asked “what do you think it is?” She studied it for a few minutes and decided it was definitely the beach. She even went so far to point out the waves.
I feel a bit cheated out of something this month!
Because early in October I’d already decided what November’s theme was going to be so I spent the rest of the month thinking about how I’d interpret it (which took me all of a few minutes!) and then planning the shot.
Having fairly easily decided upon the interpretation I anticipated huge difficulties in getting the shot I wanted. Difficulties of all sorts… composition, lighting, getting the right camera settings, problems with the props… everything in fact.
I fully expected having to modify my plan quite significantly, possibly even abandon it totally and dream up something completely different at the very last moment. In fact the potential problems I anticipated in getting what I wanted bugged me the entire time.
Yet aside from a couple of very minor tweaks to the “props” it all went without a hitch!
And very quickly too.
Returning from work early on a Monday morning after a weekend stint I made a snap decision to tackle the task then and there.
So, gather the props together. Get everything set up. Fiddle with the lighting a bit. Position the tripod and fire off a few shots at different settings. Then dash upstairs to the computer room to offload onto the infernal machine and see what would need to be adjusted for the next batch.
Hmm. Nothing! For there, right in front of my very eyes, was exactly the shot I wanted.
So wander downstairs again, put everything back in order, then return upstairs to process the pic. And… um… that’s it. All done in something less than 90 minutes. Including time to make myself several mugs of coffee!
Bugger! Its why I feel cheated. I was expecting to have to make some real effort and… er… I didn’t.
And what am I going to do for the rest of the month? For y’see, although only having just uploaded it, I actually had the session at the very beginning of the month, and have been sitting on the shot ever since.
Reason for this was purely out of consideration for the rest of the gang of course.
Being the one to propose the theme I thought it’d be somewhat inappropriate for me to also be the one to post the first pic. Give the rest of you a chance to think about it first with a clear mind so to speak.
As for the theme itself, well, as you probably all know (with the possible exception of Brian maybe?) its a sort of literary allusion. Based on a quotation from the New Testament in fact. This Wikipedia entry refers, for anyone who’s interested.
But that’s not where I first encountered it. Oh no! I first came across it in a ghost story I read as a kid, many years ago. Probably one of Sheridan Le Fanu’s, though I wouldn’t swear to that. And for some reason its stuck in my mind ever since, surfacing from time to time whenever a relevant event triggers it.
Possibly because it is so suggestive of a much wider theme (not in the photographic sense of course) that has seemed to permeate my life for almost too long now to count.
For the phrase speaks to me of things only half-seen, of things semi-shrouded in swirls of darkness. The darkness of incomprehension, or the darkness of misperception. Sometimes even the darkness of misdirection.
It speaks to me of “smoke and mirrors”. Of things not being what they seem… or perhaps more accurately, whilst being what they seem not being the whole of what they seem. Such that the reality may in fact be completely different.
It speaks to me also of another darkness… the darkness of secretiveness and things hidden, of mystery, and of taboo. Which fairly accurately describes a certain world I have frequented since virtually my early teens… the world of the occult, the supernatural; witchcraft, magic, and pagan pathways. “Dark” subjects indeed!
The phrase also, curiously, seems to describe photography rather well! For no matter how close to “reality” we endeavour to make our images, at best they can only ever be a small part of that “reality”… a slice of reality taken out of context if you will. And in that sense they can often, quite unintentionally, be entirely misleading.
And this is to say nothing of the “tricks” we may perform on or with those images to yet further remove them from their true context.
So, as with my approach to last month’s theme, I have tried to bring all these strands together into a single image, my contribution for this month. Also, of course, the image is close to being a literal interpretaton of the theme, i.e., “through a glass” (the mirror) “darkly” (the overall darkness of the shot).
And, for those who enjoy a bit of a teaser, the above image contains some deliberate “tricks”, also inspired by the theme.
One is a visual hint that much more exists than can be seen… the world “beyond the veil of appearance” so to speak.
Another is a clue that you’re not actually seeing what you may be thinking you’re seeing, though to pick it up you may need to look at the full-size image on Flickr!
There was originally going to be three “tricks” but the third one proved to be impractical… although its still there in essence. So maybe it works after all!
In addition to being pleased with the shot because it was precisely how I wanted to express the theme I’m also pleased with it for another reason entirely.
A few months back I had a photo session with the mirror that features in the shot… and the results were pretty abyssmal! Although disheartened at the time I was determined to revisit the experiment at a later date, this theme providing such an opportunity. Hence my satisfaction at an additional task done and dusted.
Finally, I’ve just realised there’s another reason I feel cheated. For this post was written the day after I took the shot, leaving me with absolutely nothing to do for the project for the rest of the month. Damn!
I suppose I could have worked on another, alternative, interpretation… had I not been completely satisfied by this one. But I am!
So its thumb-twiddling time again. Nowt to do apart from checking the website occasionally to see how the rest of you have been getting on with it. And just wait for Bob’s choice of December’s theme.
When this month’s theme was announced an image immediately came to mind…ME. I almost didn’t go this route because of the personal nature, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought what the heck…
disclaimer:
Please understand, I am not fishing for compliments. I am simply posting what this month’s theme means to me…oh, and my pic. 
“Does this make me look fat?” or wait, better yet, “I look like an elephant in this outfit.“
Yes, I am guilty! I’ve said it a million times…
My body is not perfect. I think it needs a lot of work!
Negative body image perception, I struggle but I don’t obsess.
I am 6′1, healthy and healthy looking (read as not skinny). I’ve never been petite, nor will I ever. I’ve never worn a size 2, 4 or 6, nor do I want to. However, I do wish my body was perfect. Oh to have a body like Haley Berry, Demi Moore or Heidi Klum. So, I exercise and watch what I eat.
It’s a crazy photo, nothing artsy, nothing fabulous, heck, it’s lousy quality. But what it is, ME on my exercise bike, peddling to obtaining that perfect body. 
Well…..
I was beginning to think that dear old Mike was going to stump me for the month. Through a glass darkly didn’t exactly bring to mind any particular imagery. Nope. Nothing. Looking for inspiration I turned to that series of tubes, the Internet, and searched upon the given subject.
Clearly there were plenty of literary options as well as titles to individual television show episodes, but again, nothing provided inspiration or insight. But then something of a light came on inside my brain and this popped out….
Confronted by not knowing from where he pulled this particular subject, I elected to consider what it may mean to me in the most abstract of terms. Add to this my concerted effort to determine what said subject may mean to him and his whisky soaked brain and voi la!
(update 2008-11-18) In my original post I neglected to mention that I had originally tried this shot with a glass that didn’t have any of the cuts along the bottom, as does this one. While it made the lettering on the bottle much easier to read I didn’t feel it did anything for the image. I went back to the kitchen and grabbed this glass, swapped the whisky and re-shot. I’m much more pleased with this result. I love the many distortions and such created by the flattened surfaces and think it adds quite a bit to the shot.
When I read this month’s topic, I asked myself what does this mean to me, ah yes false peception, what you are looking at isn’t necessarily what you are actually seeing, the way ahead isn’t clear.
My head was Immediately filled with ideas and images, some of which didn’t work but then this came to me and I have to confess, I got a little carried away with it and so lots of shots later and a little tweaking of the actual photo this is the result.
I liked this subject – so out came the book on the Tay Bridge Disaster in 1879 when the last train from Edinburgh to Dundee via Leith and a ferry to Burntisland (it was before the Forth Bridge was built) came a cropper as it crossed the Tay estuary. Bad design of the bridge but more especially bad workmanship and quality of materials meant that a powerful gale destroyed the high girders just as that train was crossing. All were lost. The image is meant to portray disaster and water and the blue glass ashtray (circa 1964) helped to make this image.
