Beware Eyeglasses

Eyeglasses present a special challenge for photographers. They reflect a lot of light which obscures the wearer's eyes and therefore ruin the shot. This is made worse when the subject wears reflective metal glasses like mine. Check out this photo of me taken with the onboard flash on my point-and-shoot in the middle of Times Square in New York City. I look like Elton John! In my previous post, I was pleasantly surprised that there was no significant reflection off my glasses. This is due to the fact that the key light is high above me, therefore the light that hits my glasses glances off towards the ground and not right back at the camera. If I needed another reason to take the flash off the camera, this is it. Just for fun, I angled my glasses so that the key light reflected back into the camera. :-) In conclusion, if you're taking photos of eyeglass wearers, have them take it off, or make sure that your flash is positioned in such a way that the light from it doesn't reflect back into the camera lens. The easiest way to do this is to take the flash off the camera.