How to Photograph Glass Display Cases Without Getting Reflections and Glare

Some photos you plan. Some photos plan you.

I did not plan to photograph my own face that afternoon. And yet, there I was, at the National Museum of Scotland, in front of a small silver brooch that had clearly been minding its own business under glass for a very long time — and my camera, ever the comedian, handed me a portrait of myself instead.

Photographing through glass is tricky because of reflections and glare. First, turn off your flash and any direct lights. Flash bounces straight back and ruins the shot.

Photographing in a museum is tough because everything is behind glass. The biggest challenge is reflections and glare.

Next, I didn’t shoot straight on. I stood at about a 45-degree angle to the case and moved slowly until my reflection in the ceiling lights disappeared. I got the camera lens as close to the glass as possible without touching it. That cuts down what shows up in the reflection.

I wore dark clothes and used my jacket to block light behind me. I also cleaned the outside of the glass first.

My uncle, looming right behind me, made no effort to conceal his glee. "Well," he said, "you did manage a self-portrait."

I did not like it this hot. The embarrassment, I mean. Glass cases have a way of turning a confident photographer into a flustered one within seconds.

What followed was less a museum visit and more an accidental masterclass, delivered by a man who has never once called himself a teacher.

Frame One — The Brooch, or, How Not to Photograph Yourself

Glass does two things at once, and neither is polite. It reflects the light, and it reflects you — your face, your phone, your general confusion — right back onto whatever priceless object you were hoping to capture.

The fix, as my uncle demonstrated without a shred of self-consciousness, is closeness. Lean in. Get uncomfortably near the glass, lens nearly touching it if the case allows. It blocks the room behind you and, more importantly, it blocks you.

I tried it near a row of medieval swords a little too enthusiastically and set off an alarm loud enough to turn heads three rooms over. My uncle laughed for the rest of the afternoon about that one.

Frame Two — The Ceramics Room, or, The Angle Nobody Tells You About

Some like it straight, some as it angled — apparently the glass prefers the latter.

Shoot dead-on, and you catch every ceiling light in the building, staring back at you like an unwanted cameo. Tilt the camera ten or fifteen degrees off center, though, and the glare slides away, off-frame, as if it had somewhere better to be.

We stood in the ceramics room for longer than strictly necessary, angling our cameras like two people trying to tune an old radio, until the glass finally gave up its reflection and let the pottery speak for itself.

Frame Three — The Coin Case, or, A Hand Where a Lens Hood Should Be

My uncle carries a small rubber lens hood for exactly these occasions — a little seal against the glass that keeps outside light from crashing the shot. I did not have one. He shrugged. "Use your hand."

So I cupped my palm over the lens as if sheltering a candle from a breeze, and—like most clever, slightly undignified tricks—it worked. I still do it now when I've left the real thing at home, which happens more often than I'd like to admit.

Frame Four — The Portrait Gallery, or, Why Flash Photographs the Flash

Somewhere near the painted portraits, a stranger kept firing his flash at a glass case, again and again, getting the same white blaze each time and looking more baffled with every attempt.

"Flash against glass," my uncle murmured, "just photographs the flash." He wasn't being unkind. He was just right. Turn it off entirely, raise the ISO instead, and let the museum's own quiet lighting do the work it was designed to do.

Frame Five — The Filter, or, A Small Twist That Fixes Everything

He pulled a polarizing filter from his bag at one point, screwed it onto his lens, and turned it slowly while I watched the reflection actually fade on his screen, like someone dimming a light with a dial. I bought my own a few weeks later, mostly out of envy.

Frame Six — The Skylight Room, or, Why He Keeps Coming Back

By the time we reached the upper gallery, the grey afternoon outside had turned gold, and it was pouring quietly through a skylight onto a case of old glassware. My uncle stopped walking altogether.

"This is why I come back," he said. "Same room. Different light. Completely different photo."

Some rooms hold more than one photograph, if you're patient enough to wait for it.

Coda — The Brooch, Take Two

Before we left, I went back to that first case. Got close. Angled the lens. Cupped my hand around it the way I'd watched him do all afternoon. And there it finally was — no ghost of myself hovering over it, no glare, just a small silver brooch, sitting exactly as it must have sat for decades, waiting for someone to slow down and actually look at it.

I showed my uncle the photo. He gave one small nod and went back to his coffee.

From him, that's basically a standing ovation.