Backlighting is one of my favorite ways to play with light and creativity in nature and wildlife photography. When your main light source is positioned behind your subject and shining towards the camera, it can create all kinds of interesting effects.
Depending on your subject, your position and how you choose to expose the image, backlighting in wildlife photography can create bold silhouettes, beautiful rim lighting and a strong sense of shape and separation. With translucent nature subjects, it can reveal details, patterns and colors that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Backlighting can be tricky at first, but once you start to understand how it behaves — and how your camera meters and records it — it becomes a powerful tool in your creative toolbox.
What Is Backlighting in Photography?
Backlighting simply means that the main source of light is coming from behind your subject rather than illuminating it from the front or side.
Because you’re photographing towards the light, you’ll often be working with a significant difference in brightness between your subject and its surroundings. How you choose to expose that difference has a big impact on the final image.
You might allow the subject to become completely dark to create a silhouette, expose the shaded side of the subject to produce a bright rim of light around its edges, or use the light shining through a translucent subject to reveal its color and detail.
There isn’t one correct way to use backlighting. It’s another creative choice we can make in the field.
Why Use Backlighting in Nature and Wildlife Photography?
One of the things I love about backlighting is that it encourages you to look at your subject differently.
Rather than concentrating only on the light falling onto the front of an animal, you’re looking at what the light is doing around it.
Backlighting can emphasize the outline and shape of your subject and help separate it from the background. It can also simplify an image by drawing attention away from surface detail and towards shape, light and composition.
This is where backlighting becomes much more than a technical lighting situation. It’s another tool you can use to decide what you want the photograph to say and how you want the viewer to see your subject.
Creating Rim Lighting with Backlighting
Rim lighting is one of my favorite effects you can achieve with backlighting.
In this situation, the main light source is often hidden behind your subject. You base your exposure on the shaded side of the subject, allowing the light spilling around its edges from behind to appear as a bright outline or halo.
That bright edge of light emphasizes the shape of the subject and can help separate it from the background, adding depth and a bit of drama to the scene.
Your position in relation to both the subject and the light is important. As you move, pay attention to what happens around the edges of your subject and how clearly that rim of light can be seen.
Choosing the Right Background for Backlit Nature and Wildlife
The background is always important in nature photography, but it becomes particularly important when you’re working with backlighting.
If you’re trying to create a bright rim of light around your subject, think about what is immediately behind that illuminated edge. The effect will be much easier to see when there’s enough contrast between the subject and its background.
Don’t become so focused on your subject that you forget to look beyond it. Sometimes changing your position can give you a completely different relationship between the light, subject and background.
It’s one more reason I encourage photographers to work a subject rather than simply making one photograph and moving on.
How to Expose for Backlighting
There isn’t one correct exposure for a backlit photograph. Your exposure should depend on the image you’re trying to create.
For rim lighting, I base my exposure on the shaded side of the subject, allowing the light coming from behind to create that bright outline around the edges.
When I’m creating a silhouette, I do the opposite. I expose for the brighter background and allow the subject to become dark.
With translucent subjects, I’ll choose my exposure according to how I want the light coming through the subject to appear.
The important thing is to think about what you want the finished photograph to look like rather than simply accepting the exposure suggested by the camera.
Using Backlighting with Translucent Nature Subjects
Backlighting isn’t just for wildlife. I also love to use it when photographing translucent subjects.
For example, when I’m photographing leaves, I often position the leaf so the sun is directly behind it. This type of lighting makes the leaf glow and really shows off the vein patterns and subtle color shifts that you might otherwise miss.
Once you start looking for this kind of light, you’ll find all sorts of opportunities in nature. Instead of thinking only about the light falling onto a subject, start looking at what happens when light travels through or around it.
Using Backlighting to Create Silhouettes
Another creative use of backlighting is silhouette photography.
Most silhouettes rely on the strong contrast between a bright background and a darker subject. By exposing for that brighter background, the subject can be rendered as a simple, graphic shape.
When you’re setting up a backlit silhouette involving the sun, you’ll be surprised by how quickly the sun moves through the frame. If you try to chase it, you’ll constantly be recomposing. Instead, I find it much easier to frame the subject a little ahead of where the sun will be and let the sun move into my composition.
We’ve covered this technique in much greater detail in our guide to photographing silhouettes in nature and wildlife photography, including exposure, metering, composition and working with the sun.
A Safety Tip When Photographing Towards the Sun
If you’re creating backlit photographs that involve shooting directly towards the sun, be careful not to stare straight at it through an optical viewfinder, particularly when using longer lenses.
One workaround is to use Live View to frame the scene rather than looking directly into that very bright disk.
Thanks to Glenn Nagel for that tip!
Start Looking for Backlighting Opportunities
Backlighting requires a different way of looking at light.
Rather than automatically positioning yourself so that the light falls onto the front of your subject, look at what happens when you move around and put the light behind it.
Look for strong outlines, glowing edges, translucent subjects and opportunities to simplify a scene. Pay attention to your background and think about how your exposure will affect both your subject and the light surrounding it.
The more you experiment with backlighting, the easier it becomes to recognize these opportunities in the field.
And, as with so much of nature photography, understanding the technical side simply gives you more freedom to be creative.
Good Luck and Good Light!
Steve & Nicole