Photo Tip #101: Photographing Silhouettes

Greetings Fellow Photographers!
Today I am going to teach you about taking silhouette photos. Silhouette photos are an artistic and unique way to convey emotions or show your subjects blacked out in the foreground with a lighter background, so your subject in the foreground looks like a shadow. Your audience can only see the outline of your subject in the foreground, but the background is clear. Read on for some information on how to capture this cool effect, as well as some fun ideas for spooky Halloween silhouette photos!

Eye vs. Lens
Our eyes are amazing. They allow us to view details in the shadows (dark areas) and highlights (bright areas) simultaneously in any direction we look. Cameras, on the other hand, are not as sophisticated. They either concentrate halfway on both shadows and highlights in a shot without giving much detail in either area, or concentrate only on the highlights or only on the shadows in a shot. Professional photographers are able to look at a scene with their eyes but imagine it through the lens of their camera to get the perfect shot. This concept is important in silhouette photography because your camera typically wants to expose your subject, but you want it to be a dark silhouette. In silhouette photography, you must capture the details in the lit areas in the background to better convey the mystery or emotion of the shadowed silhouette in the foreground.

Shooting a Silhouette
When you shoot a silhouette photo, you usually have to trick your camera so it ignores the shadow and only concentrates on the highlights. To do that, point your camera only at the brightest part of the photo (the background) and don't include the subject you are trying to silhouette. Take a test photo in manual mode of only the background. Try starting at 1/500 (shutter speed) and f/11 (aperture) and keep closing the aperture (f/16 or f/22) until you get a test shot where the bright background is slightly dark or richly saturated (read more about manual mode and aperture). Then, add your subject into the shot. Make sure your subject is in complete shadow (turn off your flash) and take the shot. The best silhouette effect happens when you have very bright highlights in the background and your subject is in complete shadow in the foreground. The classic scenario is when the sun is shining straight at your camera and the subject is backlit. Take advantage of viewing your shots on your digital camera screen to see if you get the silhouette effect. If you are still not getting the shot, adjust your angle so the light is directly behind the subject.

Halloween Silhouettes
With Halloween just a few weeks away, I figured you might like to try some spooky Halloween silhouette shots. Try getting down low and shooting up at a scarecrow in a cornfield, so the scarecrow is the silhouette in the shot. Or, shoot a silhouette of an old, dead tree against a cloudy sky. Both of these shots are especially spooky late in the day. If you have kids, try a few silhouette shots of them dressed in their costumes in your yard. After you get a few shots, convert them to black and white and adjust the contrast to further emphasize the silhouetted subject in the foreground. Have fun!