I shot this last night on a business trip:
Atlanta from the Sundial by
Trevarthan, on Flickr
I'm thoroughly dissatisfied with this photo for a large number of reasons, but I did succeed in reducing the reflections from the window and the lights in the room dramatically (not entirely).
Before shooting this, I fabricated a giant lens hood (24mm has a huge field of view! I don't recommend construction paper for this. It's very difficult to get the hood angle large enough.) out of construction paper and taped it to my camera body, around my lens, then pressed the hood against the glass to get as much of a light tight fit as I could. There was only about an inch between the lens front element and the glass this way (probably less at the top and more at the bottom as my composition required tilting the camera down a bit). This removed the vast majority of reflections. There must not have been a perfect seal though because I still see a few reflections near the lower corners. That's fine. A better hood will take care of that problem. The lights were on behind, above, beside, and below me, so I was pretty much screwed. I asked if they ever turn them off and the answer was "nope, not even when we're closed".
I did try buying a rubber lens hood at a local photography shop before fabricating my own, but the only store that carried them had very shallow hoods that wouldn't have helped much. I was kicking myself for not thinking of this problem before the trip.
I also used a polarizer to reduce the reflections further.
I mean, I know this photo has a lot of problems, but the thing that bugs me the most is the weird halo around the largest skyscraper's top light. I'm not sure what's causing that. I don't think it's a reflection from the room. Is it the light from the skyscraper bouncing around inside the two panes of glass and causing reflections? Or is it something else?
The other weird thing I notice is the slash of light coming off the skyscraper to the left of the one with the orange triangle top. Is that coma?
I think I know the answer, but I might as well ask. Is there a technique to remove things like this in post? Seems like that would be difficult.
I'll definitely be buying a large flexible rubber hood or bellows soon, so I have it on my next trip. This kind of shot is really interesting to me, personally, but it's also clearly very challenging. Any suggestions besides "give up and go home" are welcome.