How To Neutralise Reflections In Your Photos

On this video photographer Rick Berk demonstrates how to use a polarizer to prevent unwanted reflections.

Reflections on shiny objects can look really cool in an image but they can also reduce contrast or show unwanted details. This is part of the reason why you might want to use a polarizer to reduce (it is typically hard to completely eliminate) reflections.

On this video Berk give two main examples – looking from the liberty state park in NJ you can see some very strong reflections on the metal walls. Berk shows the results with and without the polarizer. The second example was shot on the TWA memorial and you can see some of the reflections of the background flags and the hotspot in the center of the memorial.

In the past we have looked at different advantages of using polarized filters including “How To Use A Polarizing Filter” by Steve Perry, “How to Best Shoot Under a Mid-Day Sun” with photographer Bryan Peterson, “Tips for Shooting Through Windows On this video photog” with Gavin Hoey and “Photographing Waterfalls” Sarah Howard and more recently “Understanding and Using Polarizing filters” with Mark Ryan.

You can find many more helpful photography tips on our Photography tips section here on and LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.