REFLECTIONS UPON REFLECTIONS
Time lapse photography has always fascinated us. It’s a way of seeing beyond what our eyes can normally see. It shows us process and context. It gives us insights into secrets we never knew existed.
Add a reflection -- a mirrored time lapse -- and you’ve got a rapture. “Mirror City,” by filmmaker Michael Shainblum, is a mirrored rollout of time lapse video clips of great American cities.
Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas and Los Angeles spin kaleidoscopic stories. At first, we recognize their iconic buildings and their reflections. Then, the mirrored skylines abstract into complex geometric patterns and alien landscapes.
Shainblum imported his time lapse videos into Adobe Premiere and started playing with mirror effect in that program, multiplying by mirroring anywhere from two to thirty times.
As he played, Shainblum got the effect he wanted by mirroring just a quarter of each image, then piecing them together to form one continuous image vs. four copies.
As he played, Shainblum got the effect he wanted by mirroring just a quarter of each image, then piecing them together to form one continuous image vs. four copies.
“I find beauty in everything from the scale of our Galaxy to the way sunlight hits a glass of water from behind,” says Shainblum.
Mirror City Timelapse from Michael Shainblum on Vimeo.
