Mrs. Crouch's {Artistic} Digital Photography Class Blog

Silhouette Photography

1. Review Silhouette Photography
2. Think about places you could create back-lighting (large windows, at sunrise/sunset, with a lamp etc)
3. Take silhouette images and post the 10 best to your blog. You may make minor adjustments on paint.net, but you may not use the "burn" tool to create a fake silhouette or use "shadow" tools to darken your subject.

View the entire article on Silhouette Photography at:

http://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/silhouette-photography-tips-and-tutorial/

Normally every time you take a photo, you want the subject to be as crisp and clear as possible. However, today, we will talk about a technique that hides almost everything from the viewer, leaving it all to the imagination and delivers a stunning effect at the same time.

Silhouettes are used by artists and professionals to convey drama, emotion in a simple yet striking manner and we are going to give you a quick run down on how you can create magical silhouettes with your camera.

1) Look At Your Sources of Light

Typically, when you take a photo, there are two sources of light, the natural ambient light and the light of your flash.

The first thing you need to do to get a silhouette is force the flash of your camera off. That way, you will heighten the contrast of the subject and ensure that the subject comes out as dark as possible.

The second thing to do is to identify the sources of ambient light. Silhouettes come out best when there is only one source of light ( eg: sunlight ) against which you can place your subject. If there are multiple sources of lights, try to shut down some of them or choose the brightest one for maximum effect.

2) Compose Your Image

Create a mental picture of what you want to shoot. The magic of silhouettes is all in the shapes you create, so think about whether you want to capture dancers, a sports scene captured mid-action, or something else. This of course depends to some extent on your subject too.

Once you have a mental picture, place your subject in front of the light source and get the shape you want. If you are unsure of what you want, just try out some forms and see what you like. If you are taking the silhouette of a person, try to experiment with the positioning of their hands or features of the face – remember, its a silhouette so you’ve got to express it with the boundary of the object.

3) Fool Your Camera

Now this is the tricky part. Most cameras today are extremely intelligent, in fact so intelligent that as photographers we need to fool them sometimes to get what we need. To understand this bit, we need to get into metering of the photo.

Metering is the way in which a camera determines how to expose the photo. Remember, a camera can’t see colors, it can only sense the intensity of light – so when you point it to a scene, it sees shades of gray, finds the middle shade in the scene and sets the exposure accordingly.

More Example Photos:

Photos are taken from the following websites:

http://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/silhouette-photography-tips-and-tutorial/
http://oddfuttos.blogspot.com/2011/01/captivating-examples-of-silhouette.html