It would be easier if I was a Vampire.

I shoot a lot of Yacht interiors and Yacht interior designers love reflective surfaces, glass, Varnished wood and of course Mirrors. Yacht designers use mirrors to make tight spaces feel larger and they’re obviously useful in bathrooms.

Unfortunately for me trying to get a nice photo where I am not appearing in those reflective surfaces often can not be achieved ‘in camera’.

I do try to reduce the amount of editing required by making black clothing my uniform. Black T, Long black pants and black socks helps me to not appear in oven doors, varnished cabinetry and windows, at least not so obviously.

Black clothing doesn’t help with mirrors tho. Very often the best angle to shoot a cabin or a bathroom will mean I appear in a mirror (or two or three).

Ai is getting pretty good at replacing unwanted distractions in photos but it often gets it wrong so I always hedge my bets by taking a shot from the Mirror’s perspective as best I can to later edit onto the mirror as the ‘reflection’ of the space without the photographer.

My editing procedure is to open the ‘hero’ image and the ‘reflection’ as layers in Photoshop.

Flip the reflection horizontally in Transform.

I start with the reflection as the top layer.

Turn its opacity down so I can see the ‘hero’ through it and then transform it as best I can to match the parts of the ‘hero’ that are visible around my reflection.

This is easiest when shooting the mirror square on but with angled shots close enough is good enough. So long as the verticals and horizontal elements in the reflection match the perspective in the hero I doubt anyone but a pixel peeking fellow photographer would realise.

I then switch the hero image to the top layer and select the portion of the original reflection I want to replace. Usually not the entire mirror, things that are close to the mirror and elements not affected by me being in the reflection are left in.

Turn this selection into a layer mask to reveal the ‘reflection’ layer underneath.

I then might need to use an adjustment layer for the reflection exposure and colour cast. I might also add a slight bit of blur.

Et Voila. I’m a vampire (and so is my camera).

Here are a few examples

Example 1

Before, as shot