31 Oct 2009, Posted by Kay in t Veen in Equipment, 7 Comments

Sport silhouette

A great way to capture a sport creatively is trough making silhouettes. Normally, when shooting into direct sunlight, I advice to work with flashes to fill in the subjects. However, now we are going to accentuate the shadow in this image. This way you only see the shapes of the object you are shooting and gives a great effect.

When explaining it short and easy, a silhouette is made by placing you object in front of on of your main light sources, this can be indoor with a lamp, or best the sun or moon. When doing this your object will be under exposed (blacked out) and shows you the great effect of a silhouette?

The first step will be is turning off your flash, the object you are photographing needs to get very low light in contrast with the lighter background. The next step will be taking care of the lightning, be sure there is more light in the background and on the front of your object. Make sure your object is distinct and uncluttered, what I mean is that if you shoot like 2 people, or multiple objects, try to make the loose from each other, so you can see the real shapes.

Now the most important part, the camera settings, when shooting automatic you want to meter on the light part of the image. This means probably the sky or background. In most cases, you can press the shutter half way when pointing towards a light background, then reposition and take the shot. A other good solution is to point your camera towards the background, press the shutter half way to meter the shot. and then press the * button. (not all cameras have this feature) This will lock your exposure metering and allows you to focus back on the subjects for a blurred background. (shooting at wide apertures)

But let’s face it. This takes way to long for sports photography! There for shooting manual is the best option. Try to find out what settings work best for you and give you a perfect silhouette and dial it in when you think your opportunity is coming to shoot a perfect silhouette. I’ll tell you, your up for a hard task, making good silhouettes on moving objects is going to be hard, but its great fun!