Silhouette is an outline image of a subject or a scene on a brighter background and subject is relatively darker or completely black on silhouettes.

Shooting towards the sun or any other light source is often called a “mistake” especially in landscape photography”. Shooting towards the light generally creates washed out backgrounds, for example; completely white skies are not considered nice for landscape photographs. Also when you are taking portrait shots, if the sun or another light source is behind the model you’ll have a picture with a bright background and model will be darker.

Cameras are not good or accurate at measuring the light in high-contrast scenes. In a high contrast environment that light source is behind your subject, if you measure the light from a single point on subject and set your shutter speed and aperture in respect of this; your subject will be in it’s real colors but the background will be completely white and washed-out. And if you measure the amount of light from the background which is brighter, you’ll have the correct colors of background while your subject is completely black. We will use second one in order to take silhouette pictures which means we will get the light measurement from background or light source itself.

Getting familiar with your camera is vital in silhouette photography as it is very important also in other kinds of photography. So you should know that the exposure settings that your camera recommends may not be correct in high-contrast environments. Take the shot with recommended settings then review it, if you like the outcome there’s no problem but if you don’t , switch the manual mode and try different settings; faster shutter for darker results , slower shutter for brighter results or high f values of aperture for darker results , low f values for brighter results. Also you can change settings while using Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority modes +/- 2 Exposure option of the camera.

You will see that it is not that hard to take a nice silhouette shot, try it a couple of times and you’ll get used to the settings. Remember, sunset and sunrise creates a sky with stunning colors, place your subject between your camera and the sun these times of day and you can take amazing pictures with silhouettes.

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