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!
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.
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.
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?
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