[dolphingirl]

We just picked up our engagement photos last night and some of them had glare on my fiancee's glasses. The photographer told us that it would cost us extra for him to take the glare out. I think this is not right. He's supposed to give us the photos that look great, and, if something isn't exactly right , shouldn't he re-touch them? I feel he's more interested in making money than making his clients happy.

[Visual Media]

If the issue had to do with photos from your wedding, Dolphingirl, I would side with the photographer. But since the problem is with your engagement photos, you may have a case.

First, understand that glare from eyeglasses isn't a trivial problem for photographers. I wear eyeglasses myself, as did my father before me, so I've had lots of experience with the annoyance of glasses being a magnet for reflections whenever a camera or camcorder is aimed their way. (And speaking of dear old dad, bald heads are reflection magnets, too -- but I doubt your fiancee has to worry about that.)

Eyeglasses lenses are convex -- they have an outward curve. That puts them in the same category as Christmas-tree ornaments. Can you imagine trying to hang a shiny ornament on your Christmas tree in such a way that it reflects absolutely no glare from any lamp in the room? That would never happen.

I'm assuming your engagement photos were taken in the photographer's studio. In a controlled lighting environment like that, it usually is possible to place lights in such a way that glare from eyeglasses is negligible, or at least minimized. However, most photographers rely on multiple lights in a studio -- typically a "key" light to provide the main light source; a "fill" light to reduce darkness in shadow areas; and a "hair light" to create highlights on the subjects' hair, and establish separation between them and the background. Some photographers use fewer lights, some use more; but any time you add a light source, in a photo involving someone with eyeglasses, you increase the chance of glare showing up on those lenses.

(People who have their photographs taken often -- actors, for example, who need to send pictures to casting directors -- sometimes keep a spare pair of frames that have no lenses at all. No lenses, no reflection problem.)

It's tricky enough minimizing glare from eyeglasses when a photographer is shooting just one subject. Add another person -- even if they aren't wearing glasses -- and the task is harder. My guess is that your photographer came up with a lighting scheme that lit you attractively (photographers tend to take more pains with brides than with grooms), but with the trade-off that at least one light was picked up by your fiancee's eyeglasses.

You ask whether the photographer should retouch the photos. If you were my client, and you were unhappy with the results, I think I would rather re-shoot the session. Here's why: The white glare visible in the photos is exactly that on the film or on the digital original: white. It can't be "brushed away" to reveal the skin tones behind the lenses. It can be dulled down, by reducing the white to a shade of gray, but that's apt to leave the photo looking as if your fiancee's glasses got speckled by primer from a nearby auto body shop as he was walking to the studio.

The most satisfactory retouching solution is to go into the image digitally, in a software program like Adobe Photoshop, and carefully sample and "clone" nearby non-glare areas from around your fiancee's eyes to replace the white glare spots. If you think that sounds like a tedious, time-consuming task, you're right.

Under the circumstances, you may make more headway with your photographer by asking for a re-shoot instead of a retouching job. Just be aware that the resulting pictures may be a "minimum acceptable glare" proposition, rather than a no-glare proposition. I consider a photo of someone in glasses acceptable if there is no more than a small hot spot visible somewhere in an upper corner of the lens. If instead there's a large glare field that partially blocks the iris of the subject's eye, that's unacceptable.

I said at the outset that if these were wedding photos, not engagement photos, I would side with your photographer. That's because outside a studio environment, it's maddeningly difficult to control what might or might not be reflected in a subject's eyeglasses. You may want to have your fiancee ask his optician for a set of frames without lenses if you're concerned about glare problems in the wedding pictures.