Well, the short answer, it’s complicated. There are a couple of ways to do that with varying levels of difficulty and effectiveness.
How to Take a Picture of A Mirror without Being in It?
Here are some of the easy but not-so-effective ways:
Clicking the Photo from An Angle
This is good if you’re in a rush and just want to get it done. It might not be the most effective way. But it works. You just need to stand slightly on the left or right of the mirror, just enough to keep yourself out. The picture will not look perfect but it’s better than nothing. So yeah.
Using an Online Background Eraser Tool
These tools are really easy to use but the effectiveness of these tools depends on your background and lighting. If you have a picture with a plain color background with minimal shadow.
It might just work its magic. But anything other than that will mess it up. And the more complex the background is more the results will vary. If you want to use one of these try to have even lighting and a plain background for best results.
Now here are the actual ways to do it effectively. But just a heads up, these are not easy.
Using Photo Editing Tools (like Photoshop)
This is the easiest way to effectively pull it off. For this, to work you need to use a tripod and try to keep the background as plain as possible because this is going to help later on.
So this is how I do it: First, you take a picture keep the camera on a tripod, and keep to the left side of the mirror.
Then click another shot but keep the camera on the right side. Don’t change the height of the camera, otherwise, it going to get messed up. So use a tripod.
Now Once you’re done with clicking the pic, import them to Photoshop and use a layer mask over both the pictures, and erase the portion with the camera using a brush tool.
And now you can touch up the image as and how you like it until you get the desired results.
Using a Tilt-Shift Lens
If you want organic pictures with no reflections, without using something like Photoshop or any digital software like that, then this is the best to activate it. Unfortunately, you can’t use this type of lens with your phone, so you need a proper camera.
Along with that I also use a tripod, because that helps in yielding better shots. Now to get the perfect shot, you’d need to position your camera (on a tripod) just slightly to the left or right of the mirror.
Now by using the shift function of the lens, you’re able to correct the perspective distortion, and then it’ll look as if the photo was taken head-on. Now one caveat is, these types of lenses are quite expensive, so if you need them for only one project or something like that just rent one.
