Reflections in water
An obvious method to flaunt a photographer's eye is to take pictures of reflections in water: puddles, canals, rivers, lakes. These are secondary images people in the street don't readily notice.
Art often works by pointing out the non-obvious. You don't necessarily look for images in the water—except when you have a camera or a phone in your hand. The equipment or the technique does not matter much, except when the reflected image is too small or too distant. In those cases, a good zoom lens comes in handy.
When I first laid my hands on a real zoom lens, some 20 years ago, I became fixated on reflected images, not just in water. But this only made me a tourist with a peculiar camera, not a photographer. I still don't know if I am one, probably not yet. I need to fight Darth Vader first.
What is the most important difference between a photographer and a tourist with a camera? The equipment? The time and the place? Whether or not you only take photos when you're on holiday? My answer is neither. A photographer has intention, one that is not simply the need to preserve a memory.
I have to admit that the intention behind these photos is quite shallow. Some have indeed been taken on holiday, taken because the reflection was there and looked good. Others come from city walks in Budapest where we were taking photos with my wife, who is a guide in our city. These were taken because they looked good and might have been useful on her website. But I did not know, and I still don't know, if, how and where these photos will be used. When they eventually make it on the website, they will either be ornaments or some kind of unexpected intermezzo, put there to call attention... to something else.
About the galleries: All the photos have been taken by me, using a Canon EOS D or EOS RP camera. None of the photos were edited or modified, except for the occasional straightening when my clumsy hands made the image slanted.
The images in the gallery are the following, from the top left:
Reflection of a small boat in the harbor (Puerto de Mogán, Gran Canaria, Spain)
A mural in the inner 7th district (the former Ghetto) in Budapest (Dob utca, viewed from Klauzál tér, Budapest, Hungary)
Residential building in the Alzaia Naviglio Grande, Milan, Italy
Artificial night at Lake Bled, Slovenia. The photo was taken in broad daylight using manual lighting settings, using an absurdly short eposure time (1/1000).
Real night in Avignon, France. The lights in the reflection come from the Pont Saint-Bénézet, the famous half-bridge over the river Rhône.
A simple reflection of trees in the fall in the river Danube, in Szentendre, Hungary. This type of reflection provides nice symmetries, provided the photo is taken from the right angle.
Waves create impressionist images: the last row begins with a tree reflected in one of the Navigli canals in Milan, Italy.
Impressionism 2: Buildings reflected in disturbed water in the same neighborhood.
The last image shows pretty much the only kind of reflection you get from an open-air hotel pool at sundown. The photo was most likely taken in Sancti Petri (near Cádiz, Andalusia, Spain)