How to photo Silhouettes?

Silhouette looks very striking. It is sharp colorful and convey strait message. That's what is a good photograph is all about no?

So how would we do it?

I will use photos from one afternoon at "Drummer beach" is south Tel Aviv. It was cloudy day with strong sun which creates very difficult conditions for photography. I decided at that day, to take some silhouettes pictures.

The first one is from a circle of "Capuera" dancers.

Usually I use these techniques:

1. Measure from the brightest source in the picture. It has to be at least more than 5 stops than the light from the figures that create the silhouette. The background has to be at least 3 stops brighter.

2. Open the aperture. You don’t need depth of field and you want that the silhouettes will be sharp and black so u need the aperture to be opened as possible.

3. Wide angle lens. Or would I say a super wide lens. It creates more drama in the picture.

4. Low angle. Take the photo from a low angle almost from the floor. Together with the wide angle lens your silhouettes become more live.

5. Include sky in the picture. Especially when you can get cloudy and dramatic sky.

Post production for silhouette

1. Sepia or other dominant color. I tend to use it a lot since silhouette images are usually mood photos. So, while using a dominant color you can emphasis the mood you wanted to crate.

In order to create this color effect I used Camera raw. In the camera raw I play with the temperature and tint slider, that's all very simple.

Gold -taking photo with tele agains the sun will create gold hue, but still you will need to, slightly adjut it with photoshop.

2. Contrast – contrast can create drama. Although I kept some of the original colors of the picture, while I contrast it the colors blow up a little.