Even more than in water, the reflections in windows and other glass surfaces provide real opportunity to create new abstractions, new worlds. They can be photographed alone, or melded with reality. Here's an image of an orchid reflected on a glass tabletop:
The blinking lights of Sutro Tower caught my eye late one evening. I started taking photos of the window's reflection of my apartment's interior plus the tower:
I had left my laptop open and on screensaver, which was set to display a randomly selected image from iPhoto of the last two years of my pictures, fading to a new photo about every 10 seconds. The windows were reflecting the changing images out into the nightscape, so I took a few photos of my photos:
What I like about these is the randomness and limited time span of the reflected image; I didn't know what was coming and I didn't have much time to capture it. The doubling adds to the abstraction. Here's a zoom of a picture of the living roof at the California Academy of Sciences:
Folks walking down JFK in Golden Gate Park:
I turned the computer to face a glass-faced bookshelf. By happenstance, I took this picture as it was fading from one image to another. I have over 17,000 pictures on my laptop, a tiny amount of which are of me. What are the odds of this unintentional self-portrait? Interestingly, the original picture of me is itself a reflection, a far-away zoom down a hallway into a room with a mirror propped up on the floor. It melds with the other original picture, a sunset scene taken from the apartment:
A picture of Grandview Heights from the apartment:
A visit to Eugene for winter break brought more reflections, this one from a painting's glass panel at mom's:
At dad's, the near-dusk light around 4:45 to 5pm blended the inside and outside nearly seamlessly, interior warmth fusing with the chill of the year's darkest days.
Books and branches:
But the jewel has been my friend Katie's corner apartment in Golden Gate Heights. Her view is spectacular, spanning a sweeping vista that looks west almost to the ocean, north to the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands beyond, and stretching across the north half of the city with even a glimpse of the Pyramid and Coit Tower, plus views of the Berkeley Hills. Golden Gate Park lays out in a vast, neatly-edged green rectangle. Domed Temple Emanu-El is prominent, along with Lone Mountain tower at USF. In the foreground is the Inner Sunset and pink St. Anne's.
Since it's a corner apartment, the windows offer an amazing variety of reflections, from both the surrounding area and from the lights within. Here's the first image I got, looking NW:
This one is a reflection of the trees that top Grandview Heights, AKA Larsen Peak, the hill just above Katie's place:
A larger view:
The lanterns make me think of visiting suns or planets:
A ghostly tree spreads a Rorschach across the horizon:
One angle in particular creates fantastical cities and jarring perspectives:
Trees and buildings as one:
With a wider scope, a new city landscape materializes like a dream. Buildings rise out of the Bay west of Golden Gate Bridge, the treed rise of Strawberry Hill in GG Park now harbors Temple Emanu-El and its surrounding neighborhoods:
A slightly closer view:
A boat heads into the new city:
