Do You Wear Glasses in a Headshot? A Sydney Photographer’s Honest Answer

Do you wear glasses in a headshot? If you wear them every working day, the answer is almost always yes.

Your photo exists so a client recognises you when you walk into their boardroom, not so you look like a stranger who borrowed your job.

At Hero Shot, we’ve photographed more than 10,000 individuals and over 1,000 companies. Glasses-wearers come through our Petersham studio most weeks, and both looks get captured so nobody has to guess.

The quick verdict on glasses in professional headshots

Wear your glasses if

• You wear them all day at work, in meetings, and on video calls
• Clients, candidates, students or patients only ever meet you in them
• Your frames are part of how people describe you
• Your LinkedIn photo, website bio and email signature already show them
• You feel more like yourself with them on

Shoot a set without glasses if

• You only wear them for reading or screen work
• You’re part-way through switching to contact lenses
• You need actor or casting submissions where the eyes must read instantly
• Your prescription is strong enough to noticeably change the apparent size of your eyes
• You want options for different platforms and internal directories

Why both looks get photographed

Deciding under studio lights is stressful, so the decision gets taken off your plate. Your glasses go on for one run, come off for a short second run, and you choose later from the gallery.

At Hero Shot, the with-glasses frames win roughly as often as not, so there’s no house preference being pushed on you.

Why glasses usually belong in your photo

Your photo has to be identifiable first

The single most common worry at the review screen is that clients won’t recognise the person in the frame. Real estate agents raise it more than anyone, because their photo ends up on signage and an open home is a face-matching exercise from the footpath.

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They are right to worry. A headshot has one job before it has any other, and removing a defining feature works against it.

Frames read as part of a professional identity

For consultants, architects and IT leads, frames often carry more character than the shirt does. When those clients compare the two sets side by side, they almost always choose the framed version, because it matches the person on the video call.

What Sydney team galleries actually show

There’s a clear industry pattern in the team sessions we photograph. Law firm galleries skew towards thin metal and restrained acetate at partner level. Finance and technology teams wear heavier, more graphic frames. Construction and property companies turn up in glasses least often of any sector.

After a firm-wide rebrand, the feedback is never about the lighting. It’s that people can finally tell who is who in the staff directory, which is exactly what happens when half the senior team was previously photographed without the glasses they wear daily.

Reflections and glare: the one real technical problem

How glare gets killed before the shutter fires

Glasses reflections are a lighting geometry problem, not bad luck. Move the light off-axis, raise it, feather the edge, and the reflection leaves the lens.

In our Sydney studio we also make micro-adjustments to you: a fractional chin lift, a small turn, or tilting the arms of the frames a few degrees so the lens angles down and away from the light source.

Anti-reflective coatings help, mirrored lenses don’t

• Anti-reflective coating genuinely reduces glare and is worth having
• Blue-light filtering coatings often throw a faint blue or violet sheen on camera
• Mirrored and heavily tinted lenses hide your eyes and can’t be rescued
• We’ve never seen Transitions or photochromic lenses darken under our studio strobes, so they’re usually fine indoors
• Put those same lenses in bright window light or outdoors near Circular Quay and they’ll go grey within seconds
• High-index lenses can show a faint ring at the lens edge in a tight crop
• Progressive lenses sometimes reveal a soft line low in the lens if the frames sit high on the nose
• Polished metal frames throw a hard specular highlight on the arm near the temple, so those get angled or lit more softly

Can reflections be removed in retouching?

Small edge reflections can be softened. Glare that covers an eye can’t be honestly repaired, because a retoucher would be drawing an eye that was never captured.

Smudges are the mistake nobody expects

Fingerprints and lens dust photograph beautifully, which is the problem. Under a large softbox, a single thumbprint reads as a milky smear sitting right over the iris.

Lenses get cleaned on the day, and you’ll still want a microfibre cloth in your bag.

Choosing and wearing frames for the camera

Do the frames need to suit your face shape?

Less than the internet suggests. Frames you already wear confidently will photograph better than a technically flattering pair you bought last week.

Thick frames versus thin frames

• Heavy frames add graphic weight and can cast shadow across the upper cheek
• Thin metal frames almost disappear and rarely cause trouble
• Rimless frames show edge reflections more than most people expect
• Very wide frames can crowd the eyes in a tight crop

Frame colour and your wardrobe

Warm tortoiseshell sits comfortably with navy, charcoal and olive. Strong black frames create high contrast, which suits a clean grey or white background. Our guide to the best colours to wear for a professional headshot pairs well with this decision.

Should you bring a spare pair?

Yes, if you own one. Two pairs give you two distinct looks in one session, which is useful if you need a formal image and a softer personal branding image.

Do people remove the lenses?

Some photographers ask for empty frames. We don’t, because the eyes then sit at the wrong optical scale and the result looks subtly wrong to anyone who knows you.

What not to wear in a headshot when you wear glasses

• Mirrored, gradient or sunglasses-style tinted lenses
• Brand-new frames you haven’t worn in yet
• A prescription pair you replaced two years ago
• Bright white shirts that bounce a hard rectangle into the lens
• Tight stripes, fine checks and busy repeating patterns
• Large logos or slogans across the chest
• Heavy, glinting jewellery near the face
• Anything you wouldn’t wear to meet your best client

Hair, fit and the small stuff

• Tuck hair out from under the arms of the frames
• Sit the frames level, then check them again after every wardrobe change
• Watch for the bridge pressing a red mark into the nose
• Let eyeliner and lash detail stay visible through the lens rather than lost behind it

Common headshot mistakes with glasses

The mistakes that get fixed on the day

• Glare across one or both lenses
• Frames sitting crooked or too low
• Nose pads sliding down through a long session
• Eyes reading dull because the light never reached them through the glass
• Only capturing one version, so there’s nothing to compare

The mistakes that happen before you arrive

• Turning up with lenses that haven’t been cleaned since last week
• Wearing frames chosen for the photo rather than for your working life
• Skipping a shave, a trim or a lint roller and hoping retouching handles it
• Booking a session with no time to try a second look

Our full wardrobe guide for Sydney headshots covers the clothing side in more detail.

Shoot-day checklist for headshots with glasses

• Both pairs of glasses, in their cases
• A microfibre cleaning cloth
• Contact lenses if you sometimes wear them
• Two or three tops, ironed and on hangers
• A lint roller
• Your usual grooming routine, done as normal
• Ten minutes of buffer time so you arrive unrushed

Glasses in team and company headshots

Keeping a gallery consistent

Consistency comes from lighting, background, crop and retouching standard, not from forcing everyone into the same eyewear decision.

We photograph plenty of team and company sessions where some people wear frames and some don’t. The set still reads as one cohesive gallery.

On-site sessions at your office

Boardroom windows and downlights create reflections a studio never has to deal with. When we set up on-site in the Sydney CBD, we flag the stray light and shape what’s left, which is why glasses are easier to manage with a controlled setup than with a phone by a window.

When you honestly don’t need a studio

If the photo is only for an internal chat profile or a conference badge, a phone, a plain wall and a north-facing window will do fine. Stand side-on to the light and the glare mostly looks after itself. Don’t book a studio session for that. Book one when the image has to carry a pitch, a bio page, or a firm-wide directory.

Cost, deliverables and what happens next

What actually drives the price

Wearing glasses never changes the cost. What changes it is session length, the number of people photographed, how many final edited images you need, and whether we shoot in our studio or come to your office.

For individual sessions, start with our headshots for individuals page, or see how we work at our headshot studio near the Sydney CBD. For a quote on either, get in touch.

What you receive

You review the images, choose your favourites, and we retouch those to a natural standard: clean lenses, no glare, skin that still looks like skin. You’ll receive files sized for LinkedIn, your website and print, and we confirm turnaround when you book.

Our Sydney and Melbourne studios hold a 5.0 Google rating from 808 reviews, and the glasses conversation is part of nearly every session we run.