Photos of silhouettes tend to have a magical and mysterious look about them. The magic in silhouette photography is simply a lightning trick, a fusion of darkness and light to make art.
Today, silhouetting is a widely coveted photography technique used in graphic stories. A simple explanation of how this works would be to hide one’s subject behind the light. Well, that’s one fundamental that can’t be overlooked, but there’s more.
Let’s discuss some incredible tips to help you get perfect silhouette shots.
1. Keep Your Camera’s Focus Against The Primary Light Source.
When silhouetting, the first piece of the puzzle is to shield your light source with your photography subject.
This technique works exceptionally well for artificial light sources in an indoor setting. For outdoor photography shoots, you can’t block a full-fledged sun. But here’s what you can do to take awesome outdoor silhouette photos.
The early stages of sunsets and sunrises are perfect for silhouetting. When the sun is a little below the horizon, you can easily place a subject against its reflection to get a shadowy display.
2. Find Unique and Natural Subjects.
After a couple of tries at perfecting the “subject against light” technique, silhouetting might come easy to you. However, to get an enigmatic silhouette shot, you need to shoot spectacular sceneries and interesting subjects.
A silhouette of a flock of birds in the sky would be great, so would be a shot of mountain hikers or just people caught in an unconscious pose. The point here is to keep things natural and exciting.
3. Focus Singularly On The Outline of Your Subjects.
Emotions have always played a significant role in photography. But that feature doesn’t apply to silhouetting. Your subject’s physical structure, not facial expressions, is all that matters.
When silhouetting on a human subject, the aim is to keep their outline recognizable and their identity a mystery. And if you intend to use non-human subjects, make sure their structures are highly defined.
4. Go for Locomotive Subjects.
Achieving style in silhouette photography comes easy when you have your subjects on the move. It’s untypical to get a good shot of a moving subject using the shutter mode, but you can take multiple shots using the burst mode and pick the best photo after.
We’re sure these tips would help you become a Pro in silhouette photography in no time. And while you’re pushing towards that, don’t forget to put your photos on display. ImageCoast can help you with that.
What use is a good snap if you can’t show it to the world?