Chasing Reflections

My friend, and seriously talented photographer, Eli Reinholdtsten, just released her first e-book Chasing Reflections through Craft & Vision.  I met Eli on the Italy Within the Frame workshop this spring.  Her talent and vision amazed us all from the first day, and the workshop was lucky to have her.  Eli taught everyone in the group something about “seeing” reflections and soon she had us all stopping to look at puddles and windows with new eyes.  I was amazed at what she could find.  We could be walking past a window and she would stop you to point out 3-4 different photographs that you could take with different layers and perspectives.  Eli has worked on her photographs of reflections with an almost obsessive passion, and the results of the hard work show in her photographs.  Eli also has a Blurb book on sale called Folk.

In honor of the release of Chasing Reflections I went out yesterday to chase my own reflections.  Now, it may be easy to walk by a store display window and take a photograph of a person walking by or a cable car passing in the distance, but it is very difficult to capture the layers and intertwined stories that you’ll find in Eli’s work.  To show a connection between the subjects, to have good composition and the right lighting-all in a reflection-adds an element of difficulty to photography.

If you’ve never gone out with the goal of photographing reflections, do yourself a favor, give it a shot, you’re guaranteed to learn something.  Oh yeah, do yourself another favor, buy Eli’s book too =)