There are many composition approaches that can be used with photography, including using reflections of birds and other subjects on the surface of calm water.
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I must confess that proactively looking for opportunities to incorporate reflections in my compositions is not something that I do on a regular basis.
I had to scour my image files for quite a while to come up with the selection of photographs featured in this article.
Working with reflections in my compositions is something that usually takes quite a bit of conscious effort. Although I do stumble on the odd opportunity, like these boats at the harbour in Lunenburg Nova Scotia.
On occasion I do recognize an opportunity instinctively, like this swan swimming out from under a bridge at Grindstone Creek.
When I do consciously focus on finding reflections and working them into various images I am often quite pleased with the results… like this duckling diving at a park in Te Anau, New Zealand.
Maybe it is a simple matter of giving myself a mental poke whenever I’m around calm water to remind myself that an obvious opportunity is at hand if I simply look for it. The image above was captured in Katikati New Zealand.
When doing bird photography there are opportunities to work with reflections… like this gull taking flight. Some of these images are a result of luck rather than pre-planning on my part.
The image above was captured on a very calm day when I was photographing swallows in flight at Biggar Lagoon Wetlands. I actually was paying attention to the reflections on the surface of the pond that morning. 🙂
This image of a partially submerged frog was captured at the Royal Botanical Gardens during a frog exhibit that they had brought in to the facility for a few weeks.
The image above was captured at Hamilton Gardens in the Japanese Contemplative Garden. It is one of my favourite images from New Zealand. The reflection grabbed my attention immediately.
This is another image taken while in New Zealand, at the Queens Gardens in Nelson. A more subtle reflection of the foot bridge.
I had a chance to grab a number of consecutive images of this merganser (?) in flight to get the reflection properly positioned in this image.
I was in an elevated position as this swan was swimming towards me at Hendrie Valley, making its reflection obvious. My wish to Mother Nature was granted when it took flight in my direction.
While at the Toronto Home Show back in 2014, the reflection on this piano jumped out at me… yielding one of my favourite images.
This feather floating on the water near Grindstone Creek on a dead calm morning grabbed my attention. I had to climb up on a large rock to shoot from an elevated position with a long telephoto zoom lens to capture this reflection.
This coot diving for some vegetation was a great opportunity to work with a reflection of the bird in very nice light. The image was captured using Pro Capture H at 60 frames-per-second.
This gull coming in to land on a glass-like water surface was reframed as the bird flew in so I could capture its reflection.
This reflection of a floating turtle at the Toronto Zoo took some time to compose. Fortunately the turtle was almost comatose which allowed me sufficient time to create this photograph.
When terns do ‘skim fishing’ along the surface of the water there are opportunities to capture the reflection of their movement over the water. This image was captured at Hendrie Valley.
One of my goals in 2026 will be to spend more time consciously trying to create images that utilize subject reflections. I’ll have to do more advanced weather related planning so I can get out more often on calm mornings.
Having this focus will likely expand my photographic subjects to include more landscape photography… which I’ve allowed to slide over the past few years.
It will also encourage me to capture more images of wading birds, rather than being predominantly focused on birds-in-flight.
Technical Note
Photographs were captured handheld using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. All images were created from RAW files using my standard process in post. This is the 1,496 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.
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