The image was commissioned by a club called 'Fuel'. They had DJ Allister Whitehead doing a set there and wanted a flyer that could have the caption 'Allister in Wonderland' on it!!
I arrived at the venue, where they had provided a model and the Alice costume. After finding a large mirror piled up in a load of old decor and junk, I looked for an empty room upstairs to do the shoot in.
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I found the room and moved the mirror up there and then set up the camera on a sturdy tripod, and locked it off. I set up my Bowens Gemini travel pack as there was no electricity in the room with one main light and softbox to the right of the camera, and then a fill light further back in the room to help light the background. The Gemini allows me to use studio flash on location because it has a travel pack which is just a battery that can run the lights.
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Firstly I got the model to stand at the mirror in the 'Alice' outfit, then got her to stand in a similar position but in the dancers outfit.
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This gave me these two pictures which is all I needed on location.
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Then it was down to the editing in Photoshop. First I cut out the inside of the mirror from the dancers outfit shot.
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Then I pasted it onto the Alice outfit shot. Because the tripod is locked off this cutout fitted perfectly into place. Look closely at this picture and you will see that Alice's hand actually comes from the dancer picture.
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This was looking good but the reflection looked like it had been shot in the empty building so I found an image that I had taken of the club and reversed it so it looked correct in the mirror.
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I copied this into the image and set the blending mode of this layer to lighten. This meant that anything in this layer that was lighter than the one below it would show up. Anything in this layer that was darker than the one below it would disappear and show the layer below. Since the background in the mirror is very dark this was ideal. The dancer is much brighter than the background so she shows through the layer. You can see how this works in this image.
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It's done a good job but there are all sorts of bits showing that I didn't want. I just got a black paintbrush and painted them out. Since they were now darker than the layer below they disappeared and let the layer below show through. I could also have used the eraser to get the same effect. With a bit of trial and error I finally got it looking like it was behind the dancer and that was that!
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I had made one small mistake though luckily no one seemed to notice - in order to make the reflections match up I'd used the dancers arm for the Alice in costume shot, and had forgotten to get the model to take her watch off - so if you look closely you'll see that Alice has a watch!
Ironically, after all that work the club promoters didn't think that the image was sexy enough, and so never used it!! ... I suppose there's just no pleasing some people !! However, the image went on to win me my website in a photography competition so as it turned out it wasn't a total waste of time after all.
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