"Mannequin" exposed

Sunday afternoon I decided to go streethunting, for some nice reflections, in the citycentre of Amsterdam. I really never know exactly what I will encouter and if the end result is going to be that what I'm looking for. It's kinda like a fishing expedition. Once I find a cool shopping window I'm good to go. But there are several necessities in order for me to take a good picture. 

The most important one is a single glass shopping window, though not very sustainable for our invironment, to me it's of great importance because the double reflection of a double glazed window will temper with the illusion of the image. It's not that I never use double glazed windows, sometimes it can give a great extra effect to the image, but not today. Second is the interior of the shopping window. I'm always on the lookout for a cool colorscheme, cause I absolutely adore bright colors! Third is the illumination of the shop. If it's to brightly lit, it will not show the street reflection. If to dark, the colors won't work to my satisfaction.

As I was walking along the Haarlemmerstraat I passed this cute little vintage store with a mannequin head in the window. Usually I use the inside of the store solely for a cool bokeh* color effect, as I almost always crank up my Olympus 12-100 lens to the max! The inside is needed for the cool colors, but this time I found the head so funny that I wanted it also prominent in the image. 

It's always the people in the reflection who are my subject, but this time I also wanted the doll's head to appear in the photograph. The major obstacle I had to solve was that I needed two people at the same time in order for the photograph to show the mannequin's head,  because without someone passing by to darken the reflection of the street, it just wasn't possible to make the head vividly visible. It took quite a bit of patience, time and trial and error but eventually I got what I was hoping for. Thanks to the person with the blue bagpack just passing by in front of the window at the right place and time. Do you see her?

*Bokeh, also known as "Boke" is one of the most popular subjects in photography. The reason why it is so popular, is because Bokeh makes photographs visually appealing, forcing us to focus our attention on a particular area of the image. The word comes from Japanese language, which literally translates as "blur".