5 tips on how to take awesome Silhouette Shots
Silhouette photography is a great way to add a hint of creativity to improve your somewhat bold images. You don't see the person's facial expression nor do you see the texture of the object. However, the message and emotion they can transmit can be very unique.
Always Shoot in Manual Mode
Before we begin, let's start with a basic setting. Make sure your camera is in a manual mode by dialing to "M" on your camera. If you try to capture silhouette on an automatic mode, it simply doesn't work so well. It's because your camera automatically calculates how much light comes in to your frame and will dull your bright sky and brighten up your subjects. Also, it will flash automatically making the object even brighter.
Basic Settings
Make sure your ISO is set to 100 unless you want more grain in your image with higher ISOs. But the point here is to make you image as dark as you can and want to have sharp image without any grains.
When it comes to shutter speed, I usually set it pretty fast at around 1/320. This ways it is quick enough to avoid any blurs caused by camera shake. If you use a tripod, you can go slower.
My f stop setting generally varies depending on how dark I want the subject without making the background to dark. Usually f5 does a pretty good job in giving enough depth and edge details of the object.
Always shoot in raw to give yourself more room to edit your image and give that final touch for a more desirable look and feel. It won't lose the quality while editing unlike shooting jpegs straight out of your camera.
Face the light and choose the right time
You may have heard people tell you not to face the light source but when it comes to Silhouette photos, you need to face the light so your subject comes out dark in a silhouette.
However, you have to choose the right time. Trying to take a silhouette photo during broad day light will be difficult to have beautiful photos as it will be very difficult to adjust your exposure. If you want to do it in a broad daylight, you can have the subject right in front of the light source and dim the light source a bit.
The best time is right during sunrise and sunset. During this time the sun isn't to bright and the sky just looks absolutely beautiful. The sky will turn orange, red and then blue during sunset and the color is in reverse order during sunrise.
Increase your exposure for gradient effect
Contrary to what I told you earlier to use a fast shutter speed for sharper looking subject, you can also increase the shutter speed to about +0.7 ~ +1 to create images that look like this one. Here, the subject in the photo are not as sharp compared to other ones above but you may have noticed that the color of the sky is more gradient. Depending on how you want your object and the sky to look, it's best that you play around with different settings.
Use editing tools to make your picture pop
I usually just use Adobe Lightroom CC to do all my editing job. First, I'd adjust the black to either maker the subject darker or brighter. (usually prefer darker for silhouette photos). I adjust the vibrance to adjust the blues and greens and adjust the saturation for reds and yellows. Lastly, I touch on the temperature whether I want the image to look more blue or red. Remember, always shoot your images in raw so you have more room for edit without compromising the quality.
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