What is silhouette photography? And is it for you?

Silhouettes…

Many associate silhouette photography with shooting into the light where the dynamic range of the scene forces both bright areas to be blown out and all details in the shadows to be complete gone and pitch black instead. But take a look at the image below – it is possible to make silhouette photography without shooting into the sun!

Although there are no super bright areas in this image, the details in the dark of the branches are completely gone and you only see the branches as silhouettes.

But otherwise silhouette photography is, as the name says, shot in a way where the subject only stands out as a silhouette. A lot of detail and information is lost about the subject or subjects. And this is on purpose to bring the structure or the shape of the subject in focus.

Image left, histogram right. Notice how the histogram touches the left hand side, indicating that details are lost in the shadows.

 

Although some details of the lamppost is provided, the tree and the lamppost stand as silhouettes against the moon top left. Notice how the image plays with lack of depth information.

Another often overlooked feature in silhouette photography is that it is 2 dimensional. Often photographers add depth in an image by having something both in the foreground, middle and background to compensate for a photo being a 2D representation of a 3D world. Silhouette photography deliberately seeks a more 2D expression just like a Chinese shadow theater.

A more classic silhouette photography with lots of dynamic range. The houses are reduced to black shapes and so is the tree. Morning sun.

You can try out silhouette photography: Shooting into the sun is the “classic” way of doing it, and your camera will often not be able to capture the dynamic range of it all and hence create an image that looses a lot of detail in the shadows – just like you want it to. If your camera has an metering setting that allows you to expose for the highlights, you can try this option – it is excellent for shooting silhouette photography also when you are not shooting into the sun.

Related reading

What is hard light vs soft light?

What is light falloff in photography?