Outstanding mechanical properties of fiber reinforced polymers led to a significant increase of their application, especially within the demanding engineering constructions. They became fundamental material for numerous industries, e.g., automotive, aircraft, aerospace, and naval architecture due to their distinguished combination of high strength and stiffness, fatigue resistance and low mass. However, to describe their complex mechanical behavior, caused by corresponding heterogeneous microstructure, it is necessary to conduct comprehensive experimental investigations. For that purpose, advanced optical methods are used simultaneously with the non-destructive testing (e.g., acoustic emission, thermography, computed tomography), providing the insight into the overall behavior of the investigated material. In this master thesis monotonic and cyclic investigation of vinyl ester resin reinforced with glass woven fabric subjected to simple shear loading is performed. Mechanical load is imposed by modified Arcan fixture. Mechanical characterization of the investigated material is done on 3 mm thick butterfly test specimens. During the experimental investigation, mono- and sterevision optical setups were employed. Each of the systems captured one side/surface of the test specimen. The application of stereovision setup enabled measurement of out of plane displacements. Based on the out of plane displacements, the error of the planar measurements was evaluated. Acquired digital images were analyzed with Digital Image Correlation based on the finite element method. Moreover, which means that the test specimens were scanned in unloaded state by using X-ray Computed Tomography, i.e., ex-situ experimental protocol was applied to determine kinematics over the entire of the observed region using Digital Volume Correlation. The analyses were performed by using correlation algorithms Correli 3.0 and EikoTwin which are based on the global approach. Measured full-field displacements were used to calculate strain fields and to determine global response of the investigated material. Global Digital Image/Volume correlation approaches resulted with correlation residual maps which gave insight into initiation and propagation of surface and bulk damage. The reconstructed volume provided the insight of the damage origin inside the test specimen. In order to follow the evolution of damage mechanism, which develops at different load states, cyclic investigation was conducted. Each cycle was determined regarding the global response of the investigated material determined from the monotonic test.