Reflections and MEflections of London

The rest of the world is obsessed with selfies, but I’ve developed my own personal style of selfie I’ve coined MEflection. I look for a shiny surface, aim my camera, and spend an insane amount of time trying to get the picture right.  I once stood in front of an antique store in Amsterdam for 30 minutes trying to get my face centered and focused in a barometer thingy.

A MEflection is a reflected selfie.

When I look in the mirror in the morning, I don’t always like my reflection. I see my zits. My 7th grade health teacher lied to me and promised I would outgrow them, but they now cohabitate with my wrinkles. I see the scars memorializing a rambunctious childhood  growing up with three adventurous brothers. I see the 6 1/2 inch scar on my neck  from two cancer surgeries. I see the chin whiskers inherited from Gramma Geneva. But when I have my camera in hand, I love my reflection. My MEflection.

MEflections are my way of interacting with the scenery around me.

Here I am  wearing my wool, double-breasted London Fog pea coat in London. Sweet fashion moments like this don’t happen to me often. It captures what I looked like dashing through the streets of London with my camera in hand and my hair frizzling in the wind.

This gorgeous copper lamp is at Harrods. Yea, that Harrods. It reminds me, again, that I didn’t have one good hair day in London. That one side of my hair is flattened out, and it’s not because I fell asleep on the Tube. Not a good fashion moment when I was rubbing shoulders with the kind of people that will spend $25,000 for a purse.

But I will tell you if you are in London, you have to visit Harrods. It isn’t a department store, it’s a destination.

I also use surfaces to reflect the scenery to capture a unique photograph.

Reflections are a way to capture what everyone else is also seeing ~ differently.

London + rain = London puddles.

It’s the perfect equation  to capture the sights. I stood by this puddle for about 20 minutes. Everyone takes the front shot of the London Eye. Not everyone  shoots it sideways and reflected in a puddle. Of course, while I was shivering, others were riding the Ferris Wheel to the highest public viewing point in London.

I stood against the wall waiting for someone to walk by to capture in the puddle. I sling my camera strap over my shoulder and hold the camera near my hip so people don’t know I’m stalking them. You hold a camera up to your face and aim it at strangers and it makes them uncomfortable. I can’t imagine why. I practice a few shots then wait, and wait, and wait.

This man was a perfect model with his confident stride and forward-focused  gaze. If I had asked one of my family members to this this, it  wouldn’t have worked. They would have whined, stomped, and pouted and I’d have missed the great shot I imagined in my mind.

Shooting random strangers usually works very well.

I call this shot “Monet Puddle.”  A slight wind kicked up a beautifully distorted pattern in the surface.

I’m so attracted to shiny surfaces I might be part crow. The doors and window of the Royal Albert Hall perfectly reflected the Albert Memorial across the street. I love how much Queen Victoria adored and memorialized her husband, Prince Albert, so this shot doubles her love.

However, my OCD is annoyed with my lack of centering and the car parked out front. If I hadn’t been in such a rush to see Kensington Palace, you KNOW I would have waited for the car to move. Great photoshoppers can move it with mouse clicks. Not me.

I loved the beautiful reflection of the Natural History Museum on the side of this bus.  Swarms of grade school kids were coming at me so I backed into the fence and snapped quickly.

See the pretty swirlies on the bus?  Harrods at night is fantastic. Of course, what is London without the famous busses?

~~~

As I admitted earlier, mirrors don’t lie. What looks in is reflected back.

Cameras also tell the truth.

During high school I worked as a reporter for a small town newspaper in North Dakota. An older woman I’d interviewed called my editor and was furious that I’d done something to her photo to make her look more wrinkled. The dear woman had more than the usual laugh lines, wrinkles crisscrossed her face like North Dakotan township roads.

She didn’t believe her mirror and she didn’t believe my camera. My editor defended me – Hey, I wasn’t smart enough to alter a picture back in the 80’s,  I barely could roll and develop my own film – but she got angrier with each explanation. Apparently, she looked into the mirror each morning, but walked away, forgetting what she’d seen.

He ended the conversation with, “Cameras don’t lie.”

I always felt bad about that situation, but my editor wasn’t lying, either.

Other than mirrors and cameras, there’s something else that perfectly reflects mankind, the Bible. It reflects our hearts, not our faces.

When we read the Bible we see ourselves. We see our sin problem and our Savior answer. Some look and walk away. They reject the truth, like the woman who rejected her wrinkle reality.

James 1:22-24 warns us against looking into the mirror of the Bible and then walking away. We’re supposed to hear the Word and do it.

2 Corinthians 3:18  tells us when we accept the truth by faith we’re  transformed into the image of the Lord. It’s not  merely a spiritual photoshop, it’s an inward change to be like Him.

 

Reflections are a creative way to capture the world in a different way. But MEflections are more important.

How are we seeing ourselves reflected in the mirror of God’s Word?

 

 

 

Three things that don’t lie; a mirror, a camera, and the Bible.