Upon reflection
When Ehpem and I were wandering around making photos, we turned down a brick alley. (We’d just been told it was haunted, so of course we had to go!).
There weren’t any ghosts, as far as we could tell, but there was a dramatic set of reflections in the windows above us.
Victoria, British Columbia
photographed 8.3.2014
PS: Want to know something sort of funny? Just yesterday, Ehpem posted a shot made within steps of this one, and wrote about looking up. Great minds think alike. And so do ours.
Posted on August 21, 2014, in Photography and tagged 365 photo project, architecture, black and white photography, melinda green harvey, monochrome, NIK Silver Efex Pro 2, one day one image, photo a day, photography, reflections, victoria, victoria british columbia, windows. Bookmark the permalink. 16 Comments.

Like the light and dark patches on the bricks. And that hose going into the one window has a serpentine quality to it. And then the reflections, as you say, come into view and make you ponder. Lovely.
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Thanks, George. I didn’t even notice that hose when I made the picture, because I was too busy looking at the reflections (that glass seemed to have extra reflective properties!). Do you think I can count it as one of those hidden elements Brett talked about, if it was hidden even from the photographer?
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I think that you most definitely can. Almost everything else in the photograph feels man-made and constructed- a lot of it linear and symmetrical. The hose feels organic, biological, alive, curved. It is somehow the most elemental and natural aspect of the shot. So, I think it enhances the photo greatly by its presence.
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It is interesting how even in a shot like this, where none of the natural environment is evident, our eyes still seem to look for, and find, “natural” elements.
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It all seems rather neat and tidy compared to your usual fare. Next time you visit, we will have to find a grottier part of town (though broken windows are a bit hard to find around here). Funny to see this post today because I have one scheduled for tomorrow of the bottom part of this same wall. Not as nicely toned, or even as crisply focused as yours, but interesting in it’s differences to yours.
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It was interesting to see your shot – if we stacked them one above the other, we’d nearly have the whole building…
I’m up for grottier parts of town next time! (I’m also sort of digging the word “grottier” which no one uses in Texas. Until now: I aim to change that, starting now.)
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Grotty is a very useful word, and grottier is more so. You have lots of it in Texas (according to your blog anyway).
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It’s possible that I’ve over-represented the grottiness. But there IS a significant amount.
Yesterday I went to Midland, Texas (proud home of George W. Bush!) with a friend. Midland positions itself as a Wealthy Oil Town and it’s a boomtown just now because of all the oil and gas exploration around there. But: we found the grotty side of town and I gleefully made photo after photo. When I got home, my spouse said, “I bet Midland doesn’t want you to post THOSE on your blog!” (They will appear beginning on September 3.)
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I will be looking for the tag Grotty MIdland, or Grotty Republic, or similar.
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I may or may not be considering starting a band called Grotty George.
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Grot is a useful shortening too, in case you are tossing ideas around. I think a new blog called Grotx would work well. You could do grotty, and agriculture if called it GroTX.
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Yes. More blogs. That’s what I need! Although I do like the look of GroTX….
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There’s a distorted face in the left bottom pane, just above the black bit.
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Yeah, it’s me. (Not really. It’s probably one of the ghosts.)
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I think I’ve just seen Ehpem’s top-down view. Intriguing partially bricked-up windows from the inside in yours, Melinda.
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