Storefronts, car windows, hotel lobby glass, a lot of my brand work happens with a pane of glass somewhere in the frame whether I want it there or not. For years my instinct was fighting reflections with polarizers and awkward angles. Lately I've started using them deliberately instead, and some of my favorite recent frames came directly from a reflection I would have previously tried to eliminate.
Polarizers solve a narrower problem than people think
A circular polarizer genuinely helps with glare and certain reflection angles, but it can't remove reflections entirely and it costs you real light, sometimes a full stop or more, which matters in the dim indoor spaces glass reflections tend to show up in. I still carry one, and I've stopped expecting it to be a complete solution rather than a partial tool for a specific angle of reflection.
Using the reflection as a second layer
A shot through a window that includes both the subject beyond the glass and a faint reflection of the street or sky behind the camera creates a genuine double-exposure effect for free, layering context into a frame that a clean, reflection-free shot wouldn't have. The trick is positioning deliberately so the reflected layer adds information rather than just visual noise, a reflected streetlight roughly aligning with a subject's eye line, that kind of controlled accident.
- A polarizer helps at specific angles, it doesn't eliminate reflections entirely
- Position deliberately so a reflection adds context, not just clutter
- Shoot both a clean and a reflection-heavy version, decide which works in review
When to just move
Not every reflection is worth keeping, and I've wasted time trying to force an interesting layered shot out of a reflection that was genuinely just distracting. If repositioning three or four times doesn't produce something that reads as intentional, the honest move is finding a cleaner angle instead of forcing a technique because it worked well the last time. The technique is a tool for specific situations, not a rule to apply everywhere glass shows up.