How to avoid glare in eyeglasses. Photographing people with glasses and minimizing reflections
Photographing people with eyeglasses – especially in the studio can be tough. You want to avoid glare in eyeglasses, but you also want to do cool lighting and you don’t want to see reflections of your lights in the glasses. Photographing people with glasses doesn’t have to be that difficult, but it is an important portrait photography technique to master if you want to get rid of glare and make great images of people wearing eyeglasses.
The challenge of photographing people wearing eyeglasses is not a new one – and the best solution that is available today is to understand how light works. In fact that is the same solution that was available decades ago when I first photographed a person wearing glasses.
Throughout my career I have come across lots of photographers who think they have tricks for photographing people with glasses. The most common one is to tilt the glasses down and honestly, that is the dumbest idea ever unless the person wears big oversized glasses – the moment you start to tilt them down – physics guarantees that the top of the glasses start to encroach on the top of the eyes and make the eyes appear smaller. I have also seen people teaching miracle photoshop techniques that don’t really work that well. Honestly – you don’t want to be wasting time in photoshop trying to fix glare.
Certainly if your subject only wears glasses some of the time and they are willing to remove them for the photograph – that solves your problem. Don’t be afraid to ask your subject if they would prefer to be photographed with the glasses on or off. Most people don’t wear glasses by choice so your not going to offend the person if you ask politely.
We all understand that light basically travels in a straight line. So the angle that a beam of light hits a reflective surface – that’s called the Angle of Incidence. The angle of incidence determines the angle that the light will reflect any from that surface – that’s called the Angle of Reflection. The Angle of Reflection will always be the same as the Angle of Incidence.
All of this means that light is fairly predictable, so as long as you remember this one simple rule of physics – you will always be able to keep your camera out of the the reflected light when you are photographing someone with glasses. So the solution is to make sure that the angle of the light hitting your subject is different from the angle that you are photographing them at so that the reflected light misses you completely.
That sounds pretty simple right? Actually it is. The real challenge comes in the fact that most eyeglasses are not flat surfaces – they are curved – so you will actually have several angles of reflection for every light source. That is why one of my favorite techniques is bounce flash
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#ishootpeople #joeedelman
Again nice video Joe. As a glass wearer and photographer I'd also suggest getting the subject to clear their glasses at the start of the shoot as well. Grubby glasses suck 🙂 Not sure if anyone else pointed this out.
Well explained!
74” while sitting, how bout standing height?
Worked great!!!!
P.s-I think if you start Physics tutions you'll have a lot of students sir🤣🤣!!!
How do you light group of people / family, when some with glasses and some not? 🙂
Great tip! Thanks!
I love your Videos Joe. I can watch this for hours
found this accidentally…. very helpful thank you.
what i was looking for that isn't anywhere but must be pretty simple is….. I have just started wearing glasses and trying to figure out how I can shoot pictures while wearing them? Do I take them off? then on again after taking camera away from the eye?
Simple thing but changes 35 years of how I have always taken 😉
I learned this the hard way … trial and error. Great tutorial nonetheless!
Thank you so much
God Bless you! I just realized today that my portrait shoot had tons of glasses and I managed to find your video before I went. Raised the lights and only had a bit of glare on one person. You saved my bacon!
Ty joe your awesome
excellent ! thank you very much
How about Natural light? ^^
Great tips for shooting a person with glasses. I have another a trick that really helped me the most and I don't have to do any fancy lighting techniques to get the right shot. If the person really wants to be photographed with their glasses because that's how they like themselves being photographed I just ask them to go to the place where they bought their glasses and have them remove the lenses from the frame. This is the best way to shoot a person with glasses because even though you gave good tricks you still have the problem where the eyes look bigger or smaller depending on what degree of prescription they have. A persons eyes with a -8 prescription will have tiny little eyes and why photograph someone that their eyes look tiny when in fact they have really beautiful without glasses but are deformed by the glass prescription. everyone I have done this has spare glasses so removing the glass from the frame is real easy and you can control the shadows caused by their glass frame. In your examples of changing the light position to avoid glare caused weird shadows around the eyes or chin or other places because you wanted to get rid of a lens reflection. Your method has pros and cons, my method is flawless. If the client is paying good money for your services there is no other way of doing this without removing the glass and photographing them with the frame only. Perfect pictures and no issues and their eyes look real instead of distorted by the lens. 🙂 If they must be photographed with their glasses on, save the headache and get them to remove the glass 🙂
So simple, thank you.
They're not the best-looking glasses, but they work: buy some dollar store glasses, and drill/break out the plastic lenses.
Joe, great content as always. I have been looking for a Mannequin with reflective eyes for ages. Which one do you use? Thanks.
Do the same "Rules" apply when shooting outside in sunlight? Sometimes you'll pick up the reflection of buildings, trees, etc.
Can't raise those above the glasses.
What a simple and informative video! Thanks so much!
Started photography recently. I’m not late. And also added to Playlist.
Hey Joe,
I was wondering how not to get frame shadows on the face of my subject. Eyeglass frames are pretty thick and when I was practicing taking self portraits, my eyeglass frame shadows were terrible. Any suggestions.
great video!
thank you. that was very informative.
Thanks! :DDDD
Great technique, I just tried it on my lighting and it worked fantastic.
I was at a retirement party for a coworker/friend. I needed to take some pictures of my friend holding the awards he received. The lights in the room were small, ceiling mounted LED lights. They were all over the ceiling. Very harsh. I could not find a position for me or my friend where the lights were not in his glasses. The lights filled his glasses. I was not expecting to have to take pictures or I would have checked the place out before the party. Any suggestions for on the spot reducing the glare in eye glasses.
So good! Thank you!
Keeping it simple as always Joe! Thank you!
Thanks Joe
Mannnnnnnnnnn I needed this! You helped me out a lot!
all i can say is…. Subscribed
Hahahaha i just love the way you present your videos. Got a chuckle out of that 0:26 secs.
I subscribed, when I heard his 20/80 explanation. 😀
Thank you master , your work is terrific!!
My biggest issue is how do you have the camera focus on the eye instead of the front of the glasses to ensure the EYES are the plane that is in focus. Ive tried having them take off their glasses right before the shot and then put them back on but still not sharp on the eyes? Any ideas? thanks
This is really helpful…..but…. what do you do if you’re outside???
clear, simple ,and straight to the point , Thanks for that awesome explanation
Your videos are so awesome!
Great content, you've got yourself a subscriber!
Scenario: you are photographing 100 members of a group. Your location on has 7’ ceilings. You are confined in a space that doesn’t allow much room at all to maneuver your lights. The setup: main light is s 36” Octabox directly over the camera, pressed up into the ceiling. Your are about 3’ from the subject with the background (a 5×7 Westcott x-drop) 1.5-2 feet behind them. You’ve squeezed two kicker lights on either side of the background. There’s very little room for any type of movement. You are shooting one person about every two minutes. Some are wearing glasses and don’t want to remove them. All of the portraits must look uniform. If you move the lights, that person will not be lit the same as the rest. What do you do? Tilt glasses? Lower the chin a little? This situation requires the “dumbest” thing you can do, to be done. Like you said, Photography is all about problem solving. And sometimes it requires doing the unthinkable, tilting the glasses. Please be aware that option is still an option, even if you think it’s dumb.
thank you Joe for this valuable information!!
Excellent. Thank you. As a causal photographer who will shoot flashes from on top of the camera, this happens to me a lot. But I will remember to use bounce flashes more.
Hi Joe. Have you tried a polarizer before?
You ROCK
Thank you for great tutorial.
Just love it! i´m new in your channel and i think its one of the best channel in the world! Thank you su much!!!
Joe, I like this one a lot! I didn't realize that adding height to the lights could help. But, it does darken the neck area. I think I've seen in one of your videos that you're not an advocate of using a reflector low. Is that anything to worry about (if you remove all my worries I might actually start producing some good work 🙂