| HAMPTON ROADS, VA FAMILY LIFESTYLE PHOTOGRAPHER |

I had a few people write me last week asking how to achieve a silhouette, like the one from my family session with the Shelley Family (See their session here).

LOVE IT!! This was my first attempt at a family silhouette (I’d only done individuals!), so I was super proud and super pumped that people were interested in how to achieve it. So here I am, telling you! 😉

 

To achieve this you’ll first need a brightly lit background.

I shoot in Manual, and did so for this shot, however a silhouette CAN be achieved in Auto… it’s just a little more tricky. So, today, I will discuss how I did this in M mode 🙂

This family and I were at the beach, with not much blocking our view of the the sunset, so I thought “HEY, LET’S TRY IT!” 😉

At first I was shooting at their level, but after my first attempt, I peeked at the image and realized the grass behind was too high, and I lost a lot of their bodies in it… To solve this problem, I dropped to my knees. Normally I would not shoot up at my subject, because it’s not every flattering, but in this case I did because they were going to be blacked out anyway! 🙂

Next, you’ll need to properly expose for the BACKGROUND. Normally, you’d want to properly expose your subject, however in this case you’ll want to do the opposite. I pointed my camera at the sky (not directly into the sun, not very good for your equipment) and I metered my light.

For a silhouette you want the shape of your subject to be distinct, so I asked them to try not and put faces together or stand too close, bc we’d lose detail in the shapes of their bodies/faces  🙂 This is why there is some space between each person, even though the parents are holding the children!

Below is my SOOC image

 

I chose to bump up my SS to properly expose for the sky, instead of changing my ISO (to avoid grain) or my Fstop (I wanted to keep some what of a shallow depth of field)…

As you can see, though, there are still some colored details in the subjects, So in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw), I made some slight adjustments:

I bumped up the blacks and slightly increased exposure to get a brighter sky!

After slightly adjusting in ACR,  I pulled the image it into PS CS6 and added some final touches!

VOILA! A beautiful family silhouette 🙂