Back to black
Q How do I meter my camera to get an effective silhouette? Jane French
A When you think of a silhouette, it’s usual to imagine an object set against a colourful and vivid sunset or sunrise. But that’s not the only kind of silhouette you can get. In essence, as long as your subject is in front of a bright background, whatever the background is and you expose for that background, the subject will fall into either a full of partial silhouette.
To expose correctly for the background, switch the camera to Spot or Partial Metering so that the exposure reading is only taken from a relatively small part of the frame. Pick a bright area to meter from – but not the very brightest if you want the best results.
It’s worth noting that even when you do this, sometimes you still don’t get a pure black silhouette; if that’s what you want you will need to shoot again and dial in some negative exposure compensation. You may even find you need to slightly increase your blacks in post-processing to lose all detail, thanks to a typical digital camera’s excellent dynamic range.
Whether your silhouetted subject is large in the frame or small, like my figure on the edge of the sand dune, it’s important that it is a clean and recognisable shape that is easy for the viewer to make out without effort. If you have lots of overlapping silhouetted shapes that become muddled and messy, your finished shot will lack a strong composition.