Hello friends,
Life is always busy isn’t it?! Get up at 8 am- breakfast at 10 am – shopping- lunch at 3pm - a small sleep- a cup of tea- cricket- late night movies, wow so busy life is!
No problem, I will give some ideas on spending a little time in the evening and get some great photos that will make some news on Facebook!
Silhouette subjects
Silhouette photography is wonderful way to express story, mystery, mood, drama, emotion without caring about the detail of the subject. Though the subject is black has no details it acts as a symbol or reference to the surrounding environment. They play with viewer’s mind and sometime makes viewer feel themselves in the picture.
There are many way to capture silhouettes but I will explain only the beginners stuff here!
Location
Check out for areas where you can see sunsets at your eye level not above eye level. A good example for the good location is a street on a hill, or like a platform. If you are living in Bangalore I can suggest you some places .Very good places I like are Lalbagh rocks, Kengeri satellitle town .
Shooting
Wait, relax, watch through view finder or LCD. Look or animals, kids playing, human behaviors , emotion ,drama, moment .Do not just include two birds and a sun. That is a very old shot and over shot. Visit again and again. There is nothing wrong in visiting same place again and again and take one or two good pictures.
evening dance, f5.6,ISO100
Composition
There is no rule for this but I can give few general suggestions as per my taste.
Do not include lots of blacks.
keep the surrounding simple and understandable.
Try to keep your main subject at 1/3rd of the frame.
Capture the moments!
But you have to find your own taste and creativity in this case.
Winter in Bangalore, f8, 1/500sec, iso400
Camera settings
Zoom little bit, do not stay close to the subject unless you are going with really wide lens and doing some creative composition. If it is DSLR I prefer nothing less than 60mm and I go up to 200mm. If it is digicam I would go minimum 30% of the zoom bar.
You need silhouettes very crisp and sharp. So DSLR guys do not shoot less than 1/500th of a second. Do whatever it takes to get that shutter speed.If you are not getting that speed even a 1/60 sec should be good provided your subjects are not moving and you have a steady hands.
Shoot at shade White Balance if you are not shooting RAW.
Digicam guys go with the sunset preset if you have in your cam( most of the cams will have it these days)
f8,1/60 sec, iso800
f1.8, 1/30sec, iso800,
Processing
If you have shot in RAW add little more warmness to get a yellow or reddish sky. But do not overdo it so that all the silhouettes looses their black and the whole picture looks reddish.
All the above pics are little more creative , needs practice and a good control over camera. But following are simple, powerful, expressive. I can express so many things with these 18 photos. If you think you can add a couple of words to any of the photos you are most welcome.
Background
I went Lalbagh rocks, Bangalore on a crowded evening. It was a lovely colorful sunset with lots of people and happenings. In a span of 20-30 minutes I captured more than 50 shots using a 55-250 lens. Out them I am showing you selected 11 shots.
laughter, happy
friendship
work
loneliness
capture
crowd, noise
mischief, freedom
family
discipline
dignity
curiosity
Last note
These types of images are starters. As you move on you will find so many ways of capture silhouettes. Check this out link . This link also. Or google it. You will be amazed to see so many amazing pictures.
Super pictures Dinesh… Loved the technique as well
beautiful pics. and helpful guide too. thank u !
thank you
Wow, amazing photos! Especially like the second and third photos! Very nice work.
thanks a lot, glad you enjoyed them
Awesome images ,Dinesh.Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge : )