Mirrors and illusions

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Sometimes, you can make interesting photography in the most boring of places. Take a mall, for instance. But when you look more closely, you can sometimes take interesting photos. Photos that will bring the viewer to question his eyes in a maze of mirrors and illusions.

Ingredients for this photoshoot

The main ingredient was the place, which is the Festival Walk mall, in Kowloon Tong. The mall has the particularity of having an intricate set of escalators which are equipped with mirrors, hence providing a very interesting visual effect when photographed from above.

I originally shot this series in colors, but then transformed them into black and white, as color detracted from the original impression.

Look at this picture, for instance:

To contrast and show the different effects.

And compare it with this one:

Criss-crossing escalators and their reflections lead to a real visual vertigo.

The force of black and white

The black and white picture takes away all the confusion and the points of attachment (which in themselves could also induce another element of confusion). Look for instance at the blue bag of the lady on first escalator and the blue t-shirt of the guy below. The eye bounces between the two similar colors.

In black and white, the lines and perspectives guide our eye, alone. The picture becomes very simple to read. Intersecting lines and reflections do trouble our brain and lead us to wonder which is real, which is an illusion.

When is color relevant?

In some cases, similar pictures can still be used in color.

Here, another case where you can’t tell what is reality or reflection… Except for a slight deformation in the reflection.

Here, for example, the muted tone of the above scene (reality) is dominated by the vivid tones of the reflection. Hence leading the eye below rather than above. It is a case where illusion looks better than reality…

How to get there?

Now, this is a place which is very easy to get to. Just get down to the MTR station Kowloon Tong. A long coridoor leads straight from the MTR to the mall. For the best effect, go straight to the top.

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