Create A Cameo Silhouette

With a strong outline, Silhouette are an eye-catching style of backlit portrait.Carolina Schmidt Shows you how to shoot and edit at en-minute studio-lit Silhouette in six simple steps

- Caroline Schmidt

SILHOUETTES ARE STRIKING, there’s no doubt about it. Whether they’re captured against the glow of a setting sun or the bright light of studio flash, the results are graphic and eye-catching. To add to their appeal, they’re also very quick and simple to achieve once you know how. We all know that our camera’s metering system can often get confused in backlit situations, causing it to underexpose the subject. Normally we’d advise exposing for the subject and to add flash or a reflector to throw some light on to the people in the scene. However, here we’ll be giving our camera a helping hand at getting it ‘wrong’ and deliberately trying to underexpose our subjects for a solid silhouette.