10 Tips for Silhouette Photography (How to Click Amazing Silhouette Photos)

In today’s photography tutorial, we are gonna explore the basics of Silhouette photography. Silhouette photography is a wonderful way to convey drama, mystery, emotion and mood in a picture. It also allows the viewer to use her/his own imagination to see the photo. Let’s explore it in more detail.

A silhouette is defined as a view of an object or a scene consisting of the outline and a featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. Meaning a dark subject against a light background. By hiding your subject in the darkness, silhouetting creates a sense of mystery in your photos, allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks and create their own unique story from the photograph.

Here are 10 simple and techniques to make sure your silhouette photos always look amazing.

1. Against The Light

A silhouette effect is created when a light source is placed behind your subject, with little to no light in front of your subject. If your subject is totally backlit, with the right camera settings, you’ll be able to capture a gorgeous, crisp silhouette shot. This means you should make sure to turn off any strobes or flashes on your camera, and, ideally, get away from any other light source that might interfere with your silhouette shot. If you shoot outdoors, it’s essential that the sun is relatively low above the horizon, which is why sunsets, sunrises and winter days at higher latitudes are perfect for silhouette photography.

2. Interesting Subjects

Interesting subjects for silhouettes are people, followed by birds, trees, and human-made structures. I particularly like silhouette photos of people because they always leave you curious about who the person in the silhouette might be and what they might look like.

3. Clean Background

When choosing your background, keep in mind that a plain, bright background will look best and make your silhouette as sharp as possible. Try to find a location without too many things obstructing the background. A handy tip for silhouette shooting is to get lower than you normally would. This way, you can capture your subject against a totally clear, bright background, without things like trees or buildings getting in the way.

4. Isolate The Subject

You’re only going to see what the subject is by its outline, which means we don’t want to have things merging into our subject. If you had everyone huddled together or have objects like trees or buildings mixed with the subject, you’re just going to see one big black blob and that’s not going to make a great silhouette! So we have to make sure the shape of the subject is separate and clear.

5. Gear

You definitely don’t need any kind of special equipment to take silhouette photos, so you can absolutely do this with the camera and the lens that you have. You can even achieve silhouettes with your point and shoot or mobile phone camera. All you need to do is make sure the light is behind your subject and now we will come to the settings.

6. Camera Settings

You can manually set your exposure to make the background properly exposed, which should leave your subject very underexposed or black. So you must focus on the light which will automatically expose the background and leave your subject dark. In your DSLR, the ISO can be low and shutter speed should be fast. The aperture can be small around f 8 to f 11 so that you get more depth of field. You can keep your exposure compensation in minus one or minus two so that your subject can be dark enough. Spot metering is the best for making silhouettes.

7. Capture Movement

Don’t just click still subjects for your silhouettes. Since we are using fast shutter speeds, you can freeze the action of the subjects and add more drama to your shots. But if you are finding it difficult to photograph fast moving subjects, even having your subject pose as though they are in the middle of an action might work.

8. Get Creative

Silhouettes are dark, but that doesn’t mean the subject has to be completely black. A little color or detail showing in the silhouette photos entices the viewer to look a little closer.

9. Interesting Clouds

When using the sky as the background, look for interesting patterns and formations in the clouds to see how you can juxtapose them with your silhouette to create a truly unique photo.

10. Post-processing

It’s a good idea to increase contrast to make the silhouettes stand out more. Similarly you may increase shadows, blacks, saturation, or reduce exposure to further enhance your silhouette. If you’re using filters, pick ones that don’t make the blacks softer or the highlights darker, which would deemphasize the silhouette.

Remember that there isn’t an exact science to taking a great silhouette. It takes practice, experimentation, and maybe even a little luck to capture a truly spectacular silhouette photo.

I hope you liked my blog. Do let me know your suggestions and thoughts in the comments section. Thank you!

Also Read – Leading Lines in Photography