Haunted Infinity Mirrors

I made an infinity mirror with a ghost image in it, I wanted it to be like the Peppers Ghost illusion but the mirror film I used was too see through.   I tried putting just an image without the mirror behind the frame and that worked better but I preferred the infinity effect.

 I added a second layer of mirror film to the glass to see if that would make it more opaque when the lights were off.   It worked a bit better than the single layer.  When the mirror was on the floor, the infinity effect made it look as though there was a pit in the floor.

 I put some candles in it to see what it looked like and I really liked the affect, but unfortunately candles wouldn't be safe to have lighting in it all the time.

 Because I liked the way the candles looked, I made another version with yellow lights.

 The mirrors looked best when the lights were switched off.

I layered the two frames which looked cool too as it had more light reflections.  With the frames layered and only the yellow lights on it still looked like there were blue lights too because of the blue tint to the window film.

I really liked the effect of the infinity mirrors.  I think some of them looked a slightly alter-ish or religious but I liked that too.  I found using different lights like the blue lights, yellow lights and candles interesting.  I'd like to see what happens if I try even more light effects such as frosted or stained bulbs.

Ghost Photograpy

I created a ghost effect when taking photos by using a slow shutter speed on my camera, dim lighting and moving out of the picture while it was still being taken. It took a while for me to get the lighting right as when it was too bright, the image was too faded for me to be able to use it on a mirror. 

 

 

The photos worked best when I used the light from the hallway coming through the door.  I chose clothes an tulle that created good effects for movement.  The tulle gives the effect of an aura surrounding the figure. I edited the photos and applied different effects to them with Photoshop. Then I put them onto mirrors.

The chrome effect on this image looks like the figure is melting out of or coming out of the mirror, like something emerging from a mirror dimension.  This has given me the idea to make something like this in relief. 

Haunted Mirrors

After reading about the artist Jacob Kassay, I really liked the way he used the reflected surface as the art piece instead of just using it as a tool to create the piece so this probably influenced my decision to start using the mirrors as a picture.  As reflections were reminding me of ghosts, I decided to make some haunted mirrors.  At used a photo I already had while I was figuring out how to apply the images to the surface of the mirror. I tried using different effects on Photoshop to make the image look more ghost-like. I read that I could transfer it using gel medium but I was unable to get any.  I tried coating the printed out image in glue but I didn't really like how it turned out so instead I used clear self adhesive book covering.  I printed the image onto paper and stuck it face down on the book covering, then dampened the paper and started peeling and rubbing it off until I was left mostly with just the ink on the plastic.  I also printed the image on transparency and glued it onto the mirror.  In the fourth image I applied glue to the transparency and tried to transfer it onto the mirror this way but the colours came out overly bright and it was all smudgy so I decided to leave the transparency stuck onto it as it looks kind of creepy.

this image has a crack in the mirror but it didn't come out well in the photo.

I wanted to make the mirrors look old and tarnished so I used sandpaper to scrape the backing from the mirror (see the top of the mirror in the first image) and filled in the scrapes with black marker (see top of third image).  In some of Jacob Kassays paintings the edges of the canvas is burned so I decided to try burning the mirrors with a candle. I burnt wax onto part of the mirror in the third image but you can't see it well in the picture.  In the last photo above I used a template of a silhouette, burned around it and removed the template, unfortunately you can't see  it properly in the photo.