Sorry, I forgot to answer your other question Josh: Pedro has a good eye, but in this case, he also let me borrow his circular polarizer :)

A polarizing filter can be used to reduce reflections. As you can see, there are still a lot of reflections in this picture, but believe me, there were a lot more before I put the filter on. This filter can also be used to create some pretty dramatic blues in the sky as seen in this photograph.