Reflection ~ Photo Challenge

Yes, I have not finished the challenge, and I regret nothing. Just so that the link is here, I am still doing @OrchindDoll's Photography Challenge, at a very snail-like pace. Nevermind me. Today, I want to show you my take on the Reflection topic... and share some good laughs about this! Anyways, this is the final photo, and will rant more under the cut.

So, I got this idea from Instagram (probably) and decided to try it. Basically, it is similar to the "double exposure" thing I attempted a while back. But this one was funny! I woke up that Sunday repeating to myself "put the bluetack in the camera bag, put the blue tack in the camera bag". I revised the battery, put on the lens I wanted to use. "Get the bluetack and put it in the camera bag". Then, solar protector, partner as well (needed a second pair of hands for this one). "Put the bluetack in the camera bag". Left the flat. Half way there: "I didn't bring the bluetack!!!".

Why was it so important? Basically, I had to ensure that the sneakers would remain in the exact same position. Bluetack would have helped. Like this, I had to wrestle V's feet out of it, without moving a milimiter of anything. I also got those two reflective panels. Ideally, I would have liked to do this with water, but it would have been a mess.

So, everything in hand, except... you know, the bluetack, we ended in the park. Partner kept suggesting pretty places, but I wanted something hidden, dry and with enough space. Why? I took up this whole place for about 30 minutes. Yes. 30 minutes for a single photo. First, the gorilla tripod I had last year died, broke in pieces... then the leaves kept moving, the sun coming in and out... the mosquitoes. THE MOSQUITOES. My goodness. I was eaten alive by the mosquitoes.

Then, I had to balance my camera in a dang rock (that's why I got the partner, to take a look at the camera). Connected it to my phone, sat close to V, and shooted the camera with the phone, so as to not move anything not even a milimeter. So, my settings were: a Minolta 35-70mm, zoomed up to 70mm, f3.5. I had to take the photo afterwards, because I was using the phone to shot the camera.

But, what about the photo per se? Basically, what I did was putting both reflective panels in the flor, and standing Venezia at the edge, like you see at the bottom left. I took a continuous shooting of about 75 photos in there. Then, went to her, wrestled her out of her sneakers (which had to remain in the exact same position), and took another 70-something photos.

To merge them, I used masking layers in Photoshop (quick tutorial here), to basically: a) keep the bottom part of the photo *with* Venezia, and b) keep the top part of the photo *without* Venezia. These are the two I mixed:

That's it for today! I know, a single photo... but it took me about 30min to shoot, about 40min to edit it, plus about 15min to write the post. I think I put enough effort, ha! Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this one!