“The water in the stream may have changed many times but the reflection of the moon and the stars remains the same” - Rumi

Living near the Thames, one of my favourite things to see and to photograph is reflections. There’s something wonderful and awe inspiring about them. Part of the magic is that they can be fleeting. You see a beautiful reflection on the water, then a breeze, and it’s gone! Erased by the ruffles on the water.

Another trick of the magic is that reflections catch and magnify colour. One tiny light on the shore becomes a stream of bright colour right across the water.

Then there’s the play on words, reflections do genuinely make you reflect and see into other worlds. There’s the solid outline of the real world and the ethereal, fleeting, shimmering world of reflections.

The following images are all mine. You can click on any picture to see it full size in a light box.

To start with a depiction by a master, this is Starry Night over the Rhone, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888. I took this photo in December 2021 in the Musée D’Orsay in Paris. It made a real impression on me (pun intended!) so when I started this article today, it came to mind very quickly. Luckily I had keyworded it and I found it straight away. It was the only photo of a painting I took on that day so that shows the significance of it to me. (A lot of my time in the museum on that occasion was spent photographing the clocks). This picture has often been in my mind when I’ve taken photos over the Thames.

I like to categorise things, and thinking about my photos of reflections they fall into 3 main types. In order of importance to me they are :

1) bodies of water - sea, rivers, lochs (in my case mainly the good old river Thames)

2) wet surfaces (I’m especially fond of wet pavements and neon lights)

3) mirrored surfaces - windows or other shiny materials

How did I select my reflection images to show here? I searched by ‘reflection’. I’m very slowly getting through the process of keywording all my photos. So, it wasn’t a thorough search but I found 16 I like and that’s more than enough for this blog. Some of you may remember that I had a hair raising time last year when my only hard drive in use crashed completely. Many hundreds of pounds poorer and after many, many hours of research and admin work I’m now in a good position. I have two hard drives, one Master and one Mirror and I regularly back up to a cloud copy.

Of those 16,

10 were reflections on 1) bodies of water (and yes, every one is on the Thames or nearby docks)

2 were on 2) wet surfaces

4 were on 3) mirrored surfaces

1) REFLECTIONS ON BODIES OF WATER

The first one was taken a month after I saw Starry Night over the Rhone. It’s the one of all my reflections images that I like best for its play of orange lights on the water. This is one of the few sections of this particular riverbank which has orange lights and I took this shot just to include the orange ones and exclude the white ones from either side. These lights are on a riverside path which I know well so it’s also a favourite scene. For me, the warmth of the lights is amplified by the reflections of an orange sunset in some of the windows. Looking at this again I might create a starry night sky on this one to make it an urban update of Van Gogh’s rural scene. (I’ve just put that on my list to do later.)

Next up are two very different images, both taken on the same day, which include a rainbow window. Perfect! What could be better than coloured reflections than rainbow reflections? You might have to look a little more closely to find it in the second picture - it’s on the right, at the edge of the water.

Next, another rainbow. This was County Hall in 2020. I managed to take this long exposure shot despite forgetting the part that connects my camera to the tripod! There’s a huge and extremely solid granite wall running alongside the river here so it was the perfect position.

You’d think that making a mistake like forgetting something critical would only happen once, but no, I’ve done this 3 times that I can think of, and one of them was recently. I had the tripod and the tripod head but what I’d forgotten was that I’d taken the L-bracket off my camera and hadn’t put it back on. If you’re a photographer reading this you’re either super-organised or you’re nodding along thinking “Yeah! Done that!”.

Next is an image which I think is quite rare. It was taken during the pandemic lockdown. There were no boats on the river and this coincided with a low tide and a very calm night. I’ve never seen reflections as clear as this in the Thames either before or after this night.

This is a mixed gallery of the remainder. All were taken on the Thames or in the docks on the Isle of Dogs. You can, as with all the other images, click on each one to see it in full size or tab through them.

2) WET SURFACES

Both of these are photos of artworks, taken in Canary Wharf.

The first is Colour Cubed by Mandy Lights. The second contains two artworks: Lightbenches by LBO Lichtbank and Neon Tree by Hawthorn.

3) MIRRORED SURFACES

In order these are:

i) Reflections of Canary Wharf architecture by night in the mirrored steel artwork Tear by Richard Hudson. This tear shaped sculpture beautifully reflects the bright lights of the city skyline and the megalithic, lit up standing stones that are the surrounding buildings.

ii) A lamp with a window reflection in Cafe Opera, Paris.

iii) The round building One Park Drive, reflected in another glass building in South Quay.

iv) An Overground sign reflecting on a shiny surface.

To finish off I’m going to get a little bit philosophical. We live in a strange and beautiful world. Terrible things can happen to us, or to other people. Very few of us can switch off when we witness death, injustice, unfairness and cruelty, even if it doesn’t affect us directly. Since I started in photography around 7 years ago now I’ve become tuned in to look for beauty and interest. This in turn has built up a way of looking at the world and a bank of images, not just on my laptop, but also in my brain, which has made me happier in myself.

If at any time you feel at a low ebb, get out your phone or camera and capture an autumn leaf, a reflection in a puddle, a beautiful flower, a piece of art or a shade of orange which makes you feel good. Looking for beauty has a way of making life more beautiful!

On that note, I wish you well,

Loren x