The mirror in the bathroom

Welcome to my nightmare. The mirror in the bathroom. But is it only that?

You might find yourself asking, do your nightmares always involve you wearing your wife’s pajamas? Typically no. But I have had recurring nightmares about strange clones and odd happenings since I was a child (which, I’m glad to say, happen with much less frequency now that I’m older). I would often dream that there were weird, invasion-of-the-bodysnatcher duplicates of my family following me around the house with lights for eyes (probably lifted from the “deadlights” description in Stephen King’s It). They were mainly chase dreams, never really reaching any kind of culmination (and thank god for that!), but they stuck with me.

Anywho, I was having a dream the other day (well, night really) about strange mirror men looking back at me from the other side. Strangest thing was… they were all versions of myself. I really liked the idea and figured it would be pretty easy to recreate photographically.

You may not know it, but I play the guitar. If you did know that, you probably know I don’t play it very well. I want to be able to, and I can visualize (auralize?) myself playing well and it sounding great. I just hit a wall when I actually pick up the damn thing.

One of the coolest things about photography is that I’m slowly getting to the point where I can visualize something and then actually make it happen. Sure, at this point it may not be as polished as I’d like, but I’m getting there.

This one came off pretty easily once I had the angle down and knew what I wanted my mirror selves to look like. The end result combined a few different techniques, including HDR on the background, some harsh flash setups on the mirror men, abundant amounts of photoshopped steam, and a hefty dose of contrast and saturation manipulation in Lightroom.

Sure, it’s not really as creepy as I wanted it to be, but it’s pretty damn close. Enjoy!