Mirror, Mirror on the Wall; Don't You Show Them What You Saw!

Ah, I was on Facebook this morning and saw a friend had posted some pictures of a doublewide he had at the shore. One photo was taken of its spacious bath with these double sinks. Above the sinks was a mirror and my friend, camera to his face, was reflected dead center between the wash basins.

Hmm, this brought back a memory and I felt compelled to warn him to be caution snapping pictures in a mirrored bathroom.

I learned this fact the hard way. You may not realize it, but the picture on the left has been Photoshopped.

Here is why.

Three years ago the Little Woman and I spent a few days in a hotel at Atlantic City. It was quite a place and as usual I began taking some pictures. Usually the Little Woman simply tolerates this hobby of mine, but in this instance she said, "Make sure you take some photos of that bathroom."

It was certainly an impressive bathroom. It was large and bright and had marble everywhere.  I promised I would photograph it. Besides a shower stall big enough for two, it had a massive bathtub. This tub was quite large and very deep. You almost needed a step stool to climb in and once the water had filled the tub you began to float.

This gave me a great idea.

This tub was so deep, if I sat in it only my head would show above the rim. I thought that would make a great picture to demonstrate its size.  It would be simple to do. My camera has a self-timer. I could set it upon the little dressing bench, aim it at the tub, press the shutter button and be down in the tub when the picture snapped ten-seconds later.

I undressed completely for this little shoot because I was intending to take a bath anyway and nothing would show but my head.

Well, before getting in the tub, why not take pictures of the whole room as requested by the Little Woman. So I began to shoot the various sides of the room while standing starkers in the middle of the floor.

Completely oblivious there were mirrors on almost every wall.

Don't get your hopes up. The censored picture on the left is as much as you are getting to see.

When I happened to look through the snapshots later I realized this would be very embarrassing if I had not reviewed things and took the camera to work, say, to show the pictures.

It wouldn't just be a matter of modesty either, it would also be the fact my body doesn't look the way it looked in my younger days. My appearance in the all-together these days would be the antithesis of sexy I am sure.

And so I set to work photoshopping me out of the mirrors so the Little Woman could still show this bathroom to her friends.

For the most part I was pretty successful at eradicating myself. Originally I appeared full frontal in these mirrored doors, but I managed to remove myself without leaving much of a clue that I was ever there.

Same with the photo at the top of this post.

But what about my shot in the tub? Surely there were no mirrors there.

True.

Here is what I finally got, but it did not quite go as planned.

I carefully prepared. I pulled the dressing bench into the center of the floor and placed my camera upon it. I knell down and lined up the shot in the viewfinder.

Perfect.

I set my self-timer. I pushed the button atop the camera and dashed over to the tub and sat in my pose. (No, there was no water in the tub and no, the shutter did not go off prematurely.)

In fact, the shutter did not go off at all. Even from across the room, I can hear the little whirl-click when it does.

I sat in my pose waiting and heard nothing. I tried to hold myself still as I stared across the room while time ticked by.

Oh, this is taking way too long. I must have don't something wrong. Perhaps I hadn't pushed the self-timer button hard enough. Perhaps I hadn't quite pushed the shutter button. I would have to get out and go see what the problem was.

I climbed out of the tub. I walked across the room to the bench, which brought the camera to about crotch high. I picked the camera up and turned it over so the lens pointed straight down my naked body toward my naked feet and examined the panel.

Yes, indeed, I had set the self-timer and it had certainly worked. I hadn't heard any shutter click because I had not pressed the shutter-button in my haste. I had pressed the video button and now had a perfectly filmed record of everything described in the last paragraph.

And no, you won't find the video on YouTube.