An argument is more interesting if both sides get a fair break—and it lasts longer. The same rule applies to many snapshot subjects, Put a mirror in the picture, to show both back and front of your subject—and your picture will have twice as much to tell.
It's no trouble to take snapshots of this type—so long as you have your subject close to the glass. Just focus for the distance from mirror to camera, use a smal! lens opening—and both the subject and its reflection will be sharp.
However, as the subject backs away from the glass. the reflection also backs away—in the opposite direction, In other words, it gets farther away from the camera. Therefore. to get the reflection sharp, you must do a bit of simple addition before you focus, Just measure the distance from camera to mirror. add the distance from subject to mirror—and set the focusing scale for the sum of these distances.
As an example: suppose the camera is six feet from the mirror, and the subject two feet from the mirror, Then, if you want.the sharpest possible picture of the reflect tion. set the focus at eight feet. To get both reflection and subject sharp, use focus at the mirror—in this case, six feet.
Before shooting a "mirror" picture. check the position of your photo lights, These have to be to one side of the subject, in most cases. Be sure that light does not shine on the camera lens. and also see that the mirror does not reflect an image of the lights into the camera.
In addition to wall mirrors, doors. and the like, try pictures of reflect tions in a mirror-bottomed tray or table. Your can get some extremely good angle shots in this manner. and they add interest to your snapshot collection.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.