Some of my favorite images involve silhouettes, a photo in which the subject is underexposed to the point where most defining features are completely black.
The easiest way to do this is by placing your subject in front of your light source, then shooting toward said light source. {Please note that best way to achieve a silhouette is by shooting in manual mode. Don't know how to do that? Check out my ebook, Making the Mamarazzi.} So like I said, place your subject in front of your light source. It could be a window, the sun, etc.
In the above example I put my beautiful friend in front of her bedroom window. Now, this next part takes a bit of practice because you have to ignore all rules of exposure here. You will want to make sure your ISO is at the lowest it can go because you want your light sensor letting in less light than if you were to expose properly. Now for your aperture it is totally subjective, but I usually keep mine at f/2.0, that is my preference so you go with your gut here. Now here is where it gets tricky. You are in complete control of your shutterspeed. You will have to play with it a bit to see how underexposed you will want your subject. Usually with silhouettes, the darker the better.
Just a quick note, in manual mode, you control what you use to expose your image. I expose my images based on my subject and not the whole image, so basically I tell my camera to read the light around my subject, not the whole scene. I wish I could go into full detail here, but that would take some time and it's all in my book (another shameless plug).
In this shot, the sun was in front of my subjects and I was shooting toward it. So not only did I get some fun flare, I was able to expose my image to create the silhouette. My shutterspeed was faster (open less time) than if I were to properly expose this image.
This shot is one of my all time favorite images. The sun was just about to set and my dear friends were already silhouetted nicely, so I grabbed my camera and shot! It turned out amazing and such a fun souvenir from our Hawaii trip.
If you notice, many times when you attempt a silhouette, you lose details from your subject, but gain details from the background. So often the background becomes lost and blown out because it's so much brighter than your subject. When you underexpose your subject, you see so many more details such as clouds, the blue of the ocean, or the horizon. It's a fun tradeoff to play around with.
Now, I have to admit that I have faked it a time or two as well. My girlfriend wanted a few belly shots in front of the sunset at my lake cabin, she wanted them silhouetted similar to the shots I took of her and her husband in Florida. Only problem? The sun does not set on our side of the lake, but instead behind our cabin. No problem! I can fix that!
I still took my shot (first photo) and underexposed my beautiful friend. Once I uploaded into photoshop, I added some sunflare to fake the sun in the background. I did a few more manipulations to get to my final image and voila, instant sunset silhouette! The magic of photoshop is endless!
Now get out and practice! Have fun with it. Put your little one in front of a window reading a book, or jumping for joy in front of the sunset. Capture those little moments with a little more "flare"!
Got questions? Feel free to leave me a comment! I love hearing from you.
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