From the course: Exploring Photography: Backlighting
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Shooting silhouettes - Photoshop Tutorial
From the course: Exploring Photography: Backlighting
Shooting silhouettes
- Silhouettes are one of the obvious backlighting options that you have. They're very simple to do. The sun is really low. I'm basically right in front of it casting a big shadow in your direction, and being rendered in complete black. This is a very dramatic, very graphic way of representing a scene. Obviously, if you do this you're giving up on shadow detail. When I'm in silhouette, you can't see anything on my face. So, that's just a decision you're going to have to make. When is it best to represent something in this very pure graphical sense, and when do you need more detail? Now, one thing that's cool about silhouettes is that they flatten things down to a very singular photographic plane. Here, I'm in total black and silhouette as is the background. So, it becomes just an exercise purely in shape. It's something that we're actually use to seeing in the real world. Though our eye have tremendous, dramatic, dynamic range, a silhouette is still evocative of late afternoon of that…
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