The Photographer's Eye: Graphic Guide

LAYERING

Reflections of scenes add an extra dimension—literally, because they add their own surface details and irregularities in a separate layer. Irregularity was a special feature here, in Yangon’s Shwedagon Pagoda. Mirror mosaic work in a very Burmese style adorns the pillars, and each small mirror is set at a slightly different angle. Close-up and focusing back through the pillar to the reflected view of the temple gave a disjointed and overlapping scene, but one that nevertheless has some recognizable parts. The golden stupas, of which there are several, are repeated in odd ways, and all that was needed was to find a camera angle that included one or two small figures to give it scale and set the context. It would have been possible to ...