Take wonderful silhouette photos with mobile phone

Silhouette photographs have an inestimable visual appeal, canvas prints combining drama, mystery and fun, emphasizing the shape of the subject and creating a strong focus in the composition. It looks cool. In fact, it's easy to capture these images on your phone. In this tutorial, you can see how to take great silhouette photos with your phone.

What exactly is silhouette?

A silhouette is a picture that takes only the outline of a person, object, photo on canvas or other scene. In most cases the main body is black, identified by the outline. But it's not a fixed standard. As long as your subject appears darker in the background of the contest, you can get the silhouette. Sometimes you can create local silhouettes. This is the magic of silhouettes, such as clothing patterns and facial features.

What is a good silhouette theme?

There are many themes to choose from in the shooting of silhouette, but they also need to be appropriately chosen. Shooting silhouette means giving up the details of the subject. The subject is relatively simple, clearly defined and easy to recognize. At the same time, it is completely different from the external environment and has sufficient recognition.

You can think about any object in nature, trees, leaves, animals, etc. If you live in a city with beautiful buildings, even using the skyline will have a good profile. As long as the shape is good, anything can be a good subject for silhouette photography. As long as it is creative and experimental, don't worry or be afraid to try something new.

How to create silhouette

Usually we think of shooting a subject in full light. However, when shooting the silhouette, the backlight is required, that is, the light needs to be behind the subject, rather than illuminating the subject from the front. At the same time in the light source and the subject of the shooting, it is better not to block, so as to avoid damage to the silhouette.

Put your camera ready, choose good composition framework within the viewfinder, the brightest part of the picture for metering points, by exposing the brightest place, then other areas such as outlook or subject will appear relatively dark, silhouette came out at this moment. But if you want a more visible silhouette, you can do so by manually lowering the exposure.

Use a simple background

The silhouette of the composition of a need to highlight the subject and clear outline, space stereo sense is relatively weak, so you need to reduce the image of other mixed and disorderly element on the screen, so be sure to background as concise as possible. In order to achieve this goal, it is sometimes necessary to view from a low Angle, with more pure sky as the background. Most of the time, you need to look as low as possible to get the best picture.

Outdoor photography: sunlight as the light source

The best time to take a silhouette outdoors is at the peak of sunrise or sunset, when the sun is soft and the best light source. Sometimes the sun can be used as the subject of photography or as a photographic prop. As an element in the picture, it will bring some amazing effects. Even a sunspot can be used to enhance the image of the subject, sometimes with difficulty. But when you do, its fun. Try to use the solar flare from different angles to make it more visual, rather than destroying the integrity of the subject.

Indoors: make good use of lights

When shooting silhouettes indoors, you can use the sun as a light source to capture them in the same way. If you use other light sources, you only need to find a powerful light source, such as a light. Placing your subject in front of a light for a scene is a dramatic and mysterious way to capture the viewer's imagination. And with enough practice, you can even try to photograph a person's silhouette or the entire body surrounded by light.

Of course, any light source can be the inspiration for shooting, such as indoor soft light, stage light can be the source of the best silhouette. As long as you find it carefully, you can find many opportunities to record moments and create mysteries with silhouette.

How to take wonderful silhouette photos with mobile phone

Note that the perspective overlaps with multiple elements

If there is more than one subject, the interaction between multiple elements easy to cause the outline overlap, if too much overlap, will destroy the integrity of the outline and aesthetics, and at the same time increase the massiness, more let a person can't see what is the main body of the shooting. Therefore, large canvas prints when photographing, it is necessary to make every object clear and distinct from an individual perspective.