Outdoor Tips

Most of the time, you'll want to plan your silhouette photography in advance. It's rare when some great subject matter with clean, simple lines just happens to present itself in front of a luminous backdrop. You'll have to find a colorful background and search for a foreground subject to match it up with.

Left: The photographer noticed this interesting pattern of light and shadow, and so positioned his subject to take good advantage of it. Photo by Jay Jorgensen Right: A straight silhouette is an unlit subject photographed against a bright background. Choose a subject that is readily identified by its shape alone, since there will be no detail in it. You can put a colored filter over the lens to add color to the background.d Photo by Lynne Eodice

A beautiful beach usually yields great results on film, but if you add a couple holding hands and walking on the shore at sunset, you can make a very romantic statement.

Sometimes you can return to a scene with great potential for silhouettes, such as the interesting statue shown here. Instead of photographing it at midday, I returned and captured pictures at dusk, when the clean lines of the statue were accented against a colorful sunset.

Look for subjects that have a bold and simple shape. It's also imperative that the subject be completely surrounded by the bright background, so that the image will read well. A couple on the beach at sunset will produce clearly recognizable shapes, but a group of people that are lined up too closely in a row can merge together into a dark clump.

A little fill light (here provided by reflected sunlight and haze) will add a little detail to a silhouette. If you use a wide-angle lens, you can even include the sun in a silhouette shot; with a longer lens, the sun and flare will overpower the image.

Exposing for silhouettes is easy. As with sunset shots, several exposures can yield good results. If your 35mm SLR (or point-and-shoot camera) has an averaging meter, place the viewfinder over the brightest area and use your exposure-lock feature to hold that exposure in place.

If it's sunset, and you want some detail in the foreground of your picture, shoot about 15 minutes after the sun goes down when there is still some ambient light around. Balance your exposure readings halfway between the foreground and the sky.

As with sunrises and sunsets, you might want to experiment with filters to enhance the color of the sky when photographing silhouettes. You can use a sunset, enhancing, or amber filter to give you a variety of colorful background effects--your subject will remain black.