Broken Mirror

Narrative function

Breakdowns, vanity, a lie: bathroom or dressing-room practical, silver in the near plane, pieces of room in the glass. Argus is many eyes.

This is one face in pieces. A team photo does not want this.

It is the wrong tool when the shards do not hold different bits of the room, and the wrong tool if you wanted intact Reflections. Glass as a cut.

How it works

Lock off through the glass, 35mm to 50mm, bathroom practical. Cracked silver, multiple slices of the same person, shards as glass not as a kaleidoscope filter.

Prompt: Broken-mirror of [Subject], silver shards, one face that does not agree with itself.

When to use it

A breakdown at a mirror, vanity that splits, a lie. Do not use it as a crack sticker on a single portrait, and do not use it for a team photo.

Compared with similar shots

Fragments is editing as shards of coverage. Reflections is intact glass.

Broken mirror is cracked silver in camera, different bits of face and room per shard. If every piece matches, you have a filter.

• FragmentsDo not give the whole.
• ReflectionsShow looking and the looked-at together.
• AgamemnonMake them ancient and doomed.

In film

Black Swan dressing rooms split a dancer across glass. Film-noir bathrooms use mirrors as moral cuts.

Glass as a cut. Grammar, not a copied bathroom.

Prompt it

Cracked silver, different slices. Broken-mirror of [Subject], silver shards, one face that does not agree with itself.

Add bathroom practical, shards holding different bits of room, same person, no kaleidoscope pack.

Broken-mirror of [Subject], silver shards, one face that does not agree with itself.

What usually goes wrong

A face with a crack overlay, or intact Reflections. The tell is one angle in every shard.

Fix it: glass pieces, different bits of room, face that does not agree with itself.

Questions