So here’s me, noodling around the city, shooting photos (okay, I know it’s way too soon for a tangent, but let me just say that I’m totally smitten with my Ricoh GR3X, oh lawdy, it’s SO much fun to shoot) and basically having as fine a time as is possible on a cold January day. The sun’s out, the sky is blue, the people I meet on the street are uniformly pleasant and smiling despite the chill in the air. It’s a nice way to spend an hour or so.

As I’m walking along I notice a mural reflected in a window. The mural includes a massive cartoon-styled woman’s face, showing alarm or horror. It’s cool, but it’s not particularly photo-worthy. But what the hell, I take a shot. Why not? I keep walking and keep looking at the mural hoping a better shot will appear, and then I reach a spot where I’m also in the reflection. There’s a giant cartoon hand reaching for me, and I’m thinking that must be the reason the giant woman is so alarmed. Still not photo-worthy (in fact, it’s even less photo-worthy), but it amuses me. So what the hell, I take a shot.

And I keep on walking (which is what you do on a photo-walk, after all). I stop now and then when the light or shadow catches my attention. I notice a particularly fine bollard. A stack of tires in an alley. There’s an ambulance and a fire truck flashing their lights in front of a hotel, but the light sucks and whatever is happening is happening inside the hotel and there’s nothing to see, so I keep walking. And I see an empty shop window, with a clothes rack devoid of clothes but with a fine collection of empty hangers. The lines are nice, the light is acceptable and there’s me again, reflected in the window along with a nice bare tree. So what the hell, I take a shot.

And I keep walking. Down along the river, which is running low. There’s about a million Canada Geese milling about as the ice is breaking up, making a colossal noise, and ignoring the mallards that are paddling around, minding their own business. Then I’m down a street with nice shops and fine restaurants, and the light is catching a table through a window, with the remains of somebody’s salad and an empty water carafe (which is a lovely word to say aloud; French, from the Arabic gharraf meaning “a drinking cup”; go ahead, say it out loud, nice and slow…isn’t it nice?). And, once again, there’s me in the reflection, ruining what might have been a nice photo. But what the hell, I take a shot.

This is a thing I seem to do…reflection selfies. They’re never good photographs, they’re never interesting photographs, and I almost never post those photos (for the reasons just stated). They’re more of a reflex action–like when your doctor taps your patellar tendon with a rubber mallet. I see myself reflected in a window, my shutter finger jerks. It’s a reflection reflex.

But as I was sorting through the day’s photos, deciding which ones were worth keeping, I found myself reflecting on my reflection reflex and c’mon, there’s no way I’m not going to use that phrase. So yeah, this blog post exists solely so I can write ‘reflecting on reflex reflections.’