Looking forward to the mirrors and the fact that you are actually staging this yourself. I would like it if we could chat back and forth tomorrow so I can make sure it is going in the direction I want. I think that I've given most of the points that I want. And I'm very interested in the double reflection that you're talking about setting up.

Also depending on the difficulty making the mirrors glow a little right at the rim between the frame and the glass itself could result in some good results.

It would be cool if you could send me the photoshop file at the end as I might want to mess with it a little myself. I also own photoshop but I primarily use it for drawing rather than editing photos. I assume that most of the effects will be in separate layers that would let me try different combinations in displaying them.

Best of Luck in putting this together. I'll have to find some way to reward you for this. It means a lot.

Go to a pet store and get a baby bearded dragon, then do a really really big close up of its eye.

I would do it myself (Sebby's eyes are so cute) but I no have good camera.

PS- turn flash off. Dont blind the little guy.

Yeah, that's no problem, I'll PM you the file location on my webserver. I'll see what I can do with the glowing edges, I like to try and do things out of photoshop if possible so I'll try some long exposure stuff to try and get them to glow with a flashlight around the rim.

Pokemon, If I can get out of my cave and go to the exotic pet store and see if they have one to shoot in the store, lizards are usually still enough I could probably bust out the macro lens. The store's pretty cool about people coming in and just looking at the animals, they even let me hang out with their arctic/red fox hybrid. If they don't, how about a gator? They have one of those around.

Just an update on your idea Cryston, taking a bit longer because there's more photoshopping required than I'm used to. Because the mantle and sideboard dont in any way line up.

What I've done so far

1: Could only find one doll that was any good under the shed, think it's rainbow bright, but I took multiple pictures of the same doll and spliced them together on the mantle.

2:The sideboard and mantle are in no way lined up, so I've photoshopped a picture of the sideboard into the reflection in the mirror on the sideboard

3:The mirror was to large, so I photoshopped a frame around it that's a good size

4:Photoshopped a further back picture of the mantle, with photoshopped dolls photoshopped on top of that, into the sideboards mirror.

I still need to shop the center doll to become a bit more menacing. Then tweaks here and there for all the finalized edge blending and the couple whole objects that haven't been done yet.

I was sort of hoping that the dolls would be sitting, not laying all over the place. Not sure how much work this would make you redo to repose the dolls. I wouldn't mind if they were the same doll sitting multiple times along the mantle But I definitely would prefer them all seated like the middle doll rather than laid around any which way.

The scene seems more disheveled. Less like something wrong in a regular scene and more like the dolls were abandoned.

I was hoping that you could get closer on the dolls so that they filled more of the scene. Maybe take the shot angled up from below the mantle so that they are in the foreground. I'm also not sure how well the use of two mirrors work with the idea of a closer shot. By the way, Don't worry about re-sizing the mirror if the frame doesn't naturally lie in the shot.

I know this is a lot of changes, but the way the shot is going at the moment seems to be the wrong direction.

Ahh more regular, so I'd need cleaner dolls to start with because there's no way to make those not look abandoned... they were in the ground for minimum 3 years... You want something someone would actually want to have on their mantle. Otherwise it's pretty regular background wise, it's a nice sideboard with my fireplace and bookshelf in the mirror

Yeah, with the closer and angled up shot with the mirror wouldn't work, from a below shot the mirror would show a reflection of the ceiling, logically it would look off if the reflection was of the room and any closer makes too a small window to tell what you're looking at.

So do you want...

-Retake the pictures with a new upward angle, changing the idea behind the mirror.

or

-Keep the image POV as is and replace the dolls/their positions?

Here's a quick and dirty of just the background image work.

Either way I'd like it closer so the dolls are clearer, but at this point I'm not sure how much of this is possible. I think that I'd prefer moving it to a point angled up and since the mirror angle wouldn't work, maybe try to replace the mirror with an old style landscape painting whether you have a picture or you have to photoshop something in. At the moment with the regular position the dolls make up very little of the scene and are hard to make out.

If possible I'd like to replace the dolls with nicer ones so that the image makes more sense.

I wasn't expecting the room to be so dark is that deliberate or just poor lighting?

At this point I'm thinking I might try to find the materials to photoshop something together myself. You don't seem to have most of the materials for this.

Yeah, having the materials is often a huge part of photography. You can photoshop in all sorts of stuff, but it's never quite the same to me, so I never put the time required to work digital imaging like a graphic designer would have. In all honesty, if I could afford a system of mirrors and easels to make the mirror in mirror effect work, I would have used it. Also, I normally I wouldn't object to buying some formal dress or goth lolita styled dolls since I'm sure I'd get my fair use of them and honestly they'd make all the difference in the world for this idea, but I've recently spent around $1,500 on miscellaneous materials.

Sorry I couldn't create what you were wanting, perhaps something more theme based and less material based? I could probably come up with something under that image's theme of subtly creepy or slightly off with a classical feel like you'd get from formal dolls and rocking chairs.