One of the things I love about Clickinmoms is that we truly are an international community. We have members from all over the world that come together in our mutual love of photography and we end up learning far more from each other in return. We have a large contingent of members from Canada, Australia and Europe and members as far away as South Africa, Japan and China as well.
One of our fantastic international members is Lisa of Tout Petit Pixel Photography in France. She’s also well known as lisamars on Clickinmoms. She is also known for rockin’ silhouettes and has graciously shared her process for taking her silhouettes here on the blog today. You can check out her site and blog at www.toutpetitpixel.com. And you can always find her on Clickinmoms where she happily shares her knowledge and love of photography. Thank you for sharing with us, Lisa!!
How To Create a Silhouette in Four Easy Steps
I’m known to be a silhouette addict.
I don’t pretend to have the best method, there are probably better ones, but this one works for me so I thought I would share.
Here is my recipe in 4 steps:
1. Location / Environment
The first thing is to face a strong source of light (the sun is an easy one!). Your subject should be in between you and the light source so that his/her body is blocking the light. This is what will produce the silhouette effect (black body over a well exposed background).
To have a nice silhouette, you need an uncluttered background. Get on top of a hill to have the sky as your only background, or on a beach… wherever you won’t have any distracting elements so that your subject in the only focus.
In this tutorial I will show a few examples of outdoor silhouettes, but you can also practice inside by using a window or an open door as your light source.
2. Your Settings
Switch to Manual mode (you can also use Priority or Aperture modes and lock exposure, but Manual is really the easiest way). Select spot metering.
Use your middle focal point to meter off your background (the sky, for example). Choose your settings to get proper exposure.
After that, you can forget about your meter and completely focus on your composition. Do a test shot to ensure your background is properly exposed.
3. Timing
The fun thing with silhouettes is that you can do them at any hour of the day, as soon as there’s enough light.
You will see a lot of sunset silhouettes, partly because it’s an easy time for this (the sun is very low, so it’s easy to catch it at the same level as your subject) and because the colors are gorgeous at that time of the day.
One example:
But you can also practice silhouettes in full daylight. The contrast with a bright blue sky is stunning.
Two examples from a sunny summer afternoon:
Warning: Including the sun in your composition can be very dangerous. By looking directly at the sun through your camera you can potentially damage your eyes (and possibly damage your sensor too). So if you try this, snap very quickly, don’t look more than a few seconds.
I’ve also been asked about how to achieve that star burst effect. That’s a cool trick I learned in Lynne’s Rock Your Camera 201 Workshop here at Clickin’Moms. She gave me the green light to share it with you, so here is how the magic happens!
It’s very easy. Choose your narrowest aperture (f22 if you can), and to increase the effect, you might also partially block the sun.
If you look at the ferris wheel example, you’ll see that I chose my angle so that the wheel would be a partial obstruction to the sun light. But as you can see on the second example, even without blocking the starburst will appear at f22. Magical!
Finally, you can obviously practice silhouettes without using the sky as your background and without including the sun in your composition. In the following example, I used the water of a lake as my background. You can see from the color of the water that the sky was still blue (it was taken in the middle of the afternoon).
4. Post-Processing
The post-processing will vary a lot depending on the type of silhouette you’re making.
Most of the time, you’ll need to increase contrast (to darken your silhouette) or even add blacks (like in my last example above). Adding clarity will help defining the outline of your silhouette. And adding some saturation will help you get richer, intense colors.
I’ll refer to Lynne again - there’s one lesson in the 201 Workshop where she teaches a lot about silhouettes, including cool ways to process them with Lightroom. I highly recommend this workshop if you want to master silhouettes!
There it is everyone ! Now go and practice! You’ll soon find out how easy it is to master silhouettes.
There is a French version of this tutorial on my blog here (http://www.toutpetitpixel.com/blog/2010/06/a-propos-des-silhouettes/) if you want to practice your High School French! (Did I mention that « silhouette » was a French word ?)
Yes, this is a linguistic tutorial too! Lol!
Hope that helps…
xoxo,
Lisa
Beautiful work Lisa and a wonderful tutorial!
Gorgeous photos, Lisa! Thanks for your wonderful explanation!
Great tutorial Lisa! You broke it down nicely!
An awesome tutorial and absolutely gorgeous photos to go with it! Thanks!
Thanks Lisa!! This is fabulous and easy.
Lisa, tes photos sont toujours magnifiques! (how is my high school French from Québec? lol). Love the tutorial, thanks for sharing.
Beautiful work Lisa. Thanks for sharing with everyone!
Great information! I have read up quite a bit on this technique, but really enjoyed your simple to use tutorial. Plus, you have inspired me to try two types of background I haven't yet, water and the indoor silhouette. Thank you again! Love this site!
Lisa!
I too am a silhouette addict. ;)
Thx for this great tutorial.
Beautiful photos, Lisa!! I'm going to read your tutorial and practice. Thank you! xxx
Just what I needed! And who knew that I would be able to practice my french along with my camera lesson. Thank you!
Wow, Lisa!!!! You amaze me. Amazing! :D
I love this tutorial Lisa and your work is wonderful!!! Thanks for sharing.
SO well written Lisa..clear and concise and easy to folllow..Cheers to you!
lisa, this is a great tutorial, merci! i have admired your work on cm, you are rocking it!
Amazing examples. I love these shots Lisa. Lynne is an amazing teacher.
Thank you for this easy to understand tutorial – I can't wait for the sun to come up so I can go out and practice!
Classic timing – I'm just pp'ing my first silhouettes from my holiday in Cape Cod. Thanks for the tips on editing. I'll have to try the f22 next time! Merci!
Great tutorial!!! TFS!
This is just what I needed! I will try it out this week! Thank you.
Great tutorial Lisa!!! I am now going to have to try the f22 trick for a starburst!!!!
The pictures are beautiful :)