Photography Tips on Glare

Sometimes when we are shooting portraits, we run into more unique challenges. One of these challenges that you may have run into is taking pictures of people who wear glasses. Most of the time, light will reflect off of glasses causing a glare which can completely block your view of the eyes in the image. Several times, I’ve been taking pictures around Roanoke and run into the problem of light reflecting off of glasses. In this blog post, I’ll talk about a few ways I’ve learned how to combat the glare on glasses.

Adjust the Angle

Sometimes when we are shooting portraits, we run into more unique challenges. One of these challenges that you may have run into is taking pictures of people who wear glasses. Most of the time, light will reflect off of glasses causing a glare which can completely block your view of the eyes in the image. Several times, I’ve been taking pictures around Roanoke and run into the problem of light reflecting off of glasses. In this blog post, I’ll talk about a few ways I’ve learned how to combat the glare on glasses.

Avoid Catchlights

Shooting catchlights involves directing light into your subject’s face. Catchlights are a beautiful way to add interest to a portrait, but can be the worst thing for glasses wearers. The approach to lighting has to be different because your have to prioritize clarity of the glasses. For instance, when shooting with window light, instead of turning your subject to face the light turn them away from the window to avoid glare.

Shade the Subject’s Face

If you are having a particularly hard time with the glare on glasses, try using something to shade your subject’s face. Eliminating the harsh light from around someone’s face also eliminates glasses glare. This shade could come from overhead shade such as an umbrella or even a hat. As long as these are not casting harsh shadows on your subject, this can be a great way to quickly eliminate glare.

Backlighting

If your light source is coming from behind your subject, it will not usually be able to cause a glare. Creative backlighting can make for some fun unique portraits.

Edit the Images

While I definitely prefer to fix the problem of glare on glasses before shooting the pictures, sometimes you will still end up with some glare. In this case, you may need to open up Photoshop and retouch the images. This is fairly easy as long as the glare isn’t obscuring the eyes. If there is glare covering the eyes, you will have a much harder time trying to clean up the glasses glare. For quick fixes, you can use the clone tool or the spot retouching tools to clear away sections of the glare. Remember to keep this editing subtle and tasteful.

Conclusion

Shooting pictures of people with glasses can be daunting and test your skills as a photographer, but with a few simple tricks, you can easily photograph these types of portraits. I hope this post helps you to prepare for these photo shoots and beat the glasses glare!