wolfe with an e's blog
Chapter 19: Shooting silhouettes.
The Leica Q2 Monochrom journal.
Some photographers consider silhouettes cheating. They say they’re too easy to take, but I really don’t think that’s the case. A good silhouette often requires a substantial amount of thought: Where do you put the subject in the composition? Where do you put the sun in relation to the subject? Should the sun be visible? Or should it be hidden behind the subject? How do you correctly expose for such vast dynamic range so the tones between black and white look their best? In creating a good silhouette, I think there may be more decisions here than with most photos. Sometimes the camera can make a good call, but not always.
I’ve included two shots taken a few minutes and a few feet apart of a sculpture by Robert Koepnick at Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio. I used my Leica Q2M on automatic with a UV filter (that I alway keep on the camera) and captured the image as a DNG file. For me, there’s no clear winner. I like them both since each says something different.
What I like about the photo above is the contrasting elements of the boldness of the sculptures, the gentleness of the glow around it and the subtleness within the clouds. Despite the starkness, it’s peaceful without the harshness of the sun. In editing, I moved the Black slider left about 20, the Shadows slider left about 20 and boosted the Clarity slider to 80 to give some definition to the clouds.
For the photo below I shot with the EV down 1 stop to sharpen the specular highlights of the sun. Because both the sculpture and the sun are at a distance, the focus creates these sharp edges on the sun. The star effect is caused by the aperture being fully stopped down to ƒ︎16. Despite the darker background, for me the sun between the figures adds some hope to the composition. In editing, Highlights were brought down by 10. The Black slider was reduced by 20 and the Clarity boosted to about 70.
When shooting a silhouette, those shooting monochrome don’t have to worry about color issues, but must be very careful in preserving tone. Underexposing shadows into black and the sun into white are expected, but how much you underexpose and overexpose will make a vast difference in the final image. Do you want the highlights areas to be completely blown out, or should there be definition as there is here? Will underexposure of shadows make the background black too and distract or even ruin the shape? You also have to think about how all the tones in between white and black will work together. This may be one of those times when bracketing exposure one-to-two stops can be helpful in guaranteeing you have something good to edit.
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Photography Leica Q2 Monochrom