Should I wear my glasses for my headshot?

 

Wearing glasses or corrective lenses is not unusual but eyeglasses can sometimes be a challenge with photography. There are, however, some things you can do before your headshot to make sure your final portrait is the absolute best. If you normally wear eyeglasses, you’ll want to wear them for your portrait. I want you to look as authentic as possible. And that means capturing you in a way that you are most often seen by colleagues, customers, and friends. Below are some things you can do to have the best headshot session with eyeglasses.

The best option starts long before your headshot session: with your optician. The solution is to buy glasses with an anti-reflective (AR) coating, which means almost no light reflects off of the lens surface—the lens becomes nearly invisible. While you might save a few bucks not buying AR lenses, your eyewear can be a distraction and look unprofessional and unpolished. Take a look at the image at right: Laurel is wearing frames with standard lenses and the photo has not been edited or airbrushed so it makes it easy to see what glasses glare looks like.

 

 

A second option is to contact your optometrist before your photoshoot and ask to borrow a pair of your frames for the day or, if they don’t have a pair, have them pop out the lenses for the day. This is a great way to get your authentic look without worrying about the glare of the lens.

 

But what if you aren’t buying new glasses, and you need a headshot? Your professional photographer can do some things to help you out. If they’re a pro, they should also be a Photoshop pro. Keep in mind that Photoshop is not a magician’s toolbox. It is a software program that takes lots of training and experience to master. But a professional photographer should be able to use their skills to adjust your image in post-production. One way it is done is to shoot one image with and one without glasses, and then create a composite image. On the left is Laurel’s composite picture, which is also fully airbrushed.

It is not easy to capture the pictures in this way. Let’s face it: no two images are identical—people move around. Even more challenging is getting a similar expression in two images so that the face has the same position and laugh lines. So in those cases, I might need to fix the glare in postproduction. Again, this takes some Photoshop finessing. Below are before and after photos of Eva. Even with more than 100 pictures of Eva, there just weren’t two that were similar enough to create a composite. So I needed to use postproduction skills to create an image that minimized the glare from her glasses.

If you wear eyeglasses on a daily basis, you should wear them in your professional photograph, because it’s how the world knows you. We are all unique, and I have yet to meet a client who is not concerned about how their final portrait will turn out.  If you have concerns about your eyewear, please contact me before your session so we can work out the details to make you look your best.

A great headshot captures the REAL YOU in a way that flatters and celebrates every unique part of you.