Nature and wildlife photography silhouettes can be some of the most graphic and visually powerful images we make as photographers.
When you find yourself in just the right light at sunrise or sunset, you can create striking images that tell a story through shape, gesture and contrast rather than detail.
There’s also a bit of photographic magic involved. The scene in front of the camera very rarely looks like a silhouette to the naked eye. In many cases, what eventually becomes a silhouette can look fairly ordinary in real life. The magic happens through your exposure choice.
Nicole and I are always looking for opportunities to create silhouettes when we’re in the field and on our photo trips. Once you know what to look for and understand how to expose for them, they’re surprisingly simple to create.
What Makes a Good Silhouette?
Silhouettes occur when your subject is in front of a background that is much brighter than the subject. This situation often occurs at sunrise or sunset, but any situation where you have a subject in shadow against a significantly brighter background can work.
By exposing for the brighter background, you intentionally underexpose your subject so that it renders as a dark, featureless shape.
This loss of detail isn’t a flaw; it’s the point. Shape, posture and gesture become the story.
Because of this, your subject needs to be clean, clear and instantly recognizable by its shape alone. Birds in flight, displaying grouse, animals with distinctive profiles and wildlife framed against a colorful sky can all make great silhouette subjects.
This image of a Sharp-tailed Grouse dancing on a lek was made early in the morning when the light was low and directional. The bird’s posture and movement gave the silhouette energy, while the clean background allowed its shape to stand on its own.
Keep Your Composition Simple
The old adage “less is more” very much applies when photographing silhouettes.
For these images to be effective, they need to be graphic and simple. You’re trying to distill the photograph down to the silhouette and its background.
It’s particularly important that nothing else in the frame merges with your subject. Anything touching your subject becomes part of the silhouette.
Branches, grasses and other background elements that might be harmless in a normally exposed photograph can completely change the shape of your subject once everything turns black.
Before pressing the shutter, take a moment to study the edges of your subject and make sure its outline reads clearly.
Using a longer lens can also help. The narrower angle of view allows you to isolate your subject against a smaller section of background, making it easier to find a clean composition and position your subject against the most colorful part of the scene.
How to Expose for a Silhouette
Exposure can be one of the trickiest parts of photographing silhouettes.
You can create them using automatic or semi-automatic exposure modes, but I very much prefer working in full manual mode with spot metering.
Here are both approaches.
1) Using Auto, Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority
Meter the scene and then use exposure compensation to expose for the brighter background, keeping your subject dark.
Depending on the brightness of the background and how much of the frame is occupied by your dark subject, you may need somewhere around +0.5 to +2 stops of exposure compensation.
The downside is that you’re making an educated guess about how much compensation your particular scene requires, so keep an eye on your histogram and adjust accordingly.
This peacock was standing in front of a distant hillside brightly lit by very early sunrise light. By exposing for the sunlit hillside, I was able to render the peacock as a silhouette.
2) Manual Exposure with Spot Metering
This is my preferred method.
Switch to full manual exposure and use your camera’s spot meter. Look at the scene and decide which area of the background you want to appear as a mid-tone in the finished photograph.
At sunrise or sunset, this might be an area of sky you want to render as a medium orange. Take your spot meter reading from that area, set your exposure accordingly and make the image.
Your darker subject will then naturally render as a featureless silhouette.
For this elephant image, I simply spot-metered the orange dust cloud in full manual, rendering it a nice medium orange and allowing the elephant to fall into silhouette.
For this shot of a Secretary bird in Africa, I used spot metering in manual mode and took my reading just above the V formed by its wings.
One of the advantages of this approach is control. Rather than relying on the camera to interpret a scene containing extreme differences in brightness, I’m deciding exactly which tone I want the exposure based upon.
Silhouettes Don’t Have to Be Against the Sky
Sunrise and sunset skies are obvious backgrounds for silhouette photography, but don’t limit yourself to them.
All you really need is a clearly defined subject in shadow against a brighter background.
This lizard was sitting on a leaf. I photographed it from below with the sun behind it. Shooting in manual mode, I spot-metered the green leaf, placing it as a medium green. This rendered the lizard as a silhouette while also showing off all those beautiful veins in the leaf.
Once you start looking for this relationship between your subject and the background, you’ll find silhouette opportunities in all kinds of situations.
Including the Sun in Your Silhouette
Including the sun can add another powerful graphic element to your composition, but it does make exposure a little more challenging.
If the sun is part of my composition, I take a spot meter reading just outside the ball of the sun. This will usually prevent the sun from becoming completely blown out, although you should always watch your histogram.
This Kingfisher was photographed in Brazil. I took a spot meter reading just outside the sun and underexposed by two-thirds of a stop to keep from blowing out the very large sun.
If you’re shooting mirrorless, you can use the electronic viewfinder to compose. With a DSLR, I recommend using Live View rather than looking directly at the sun through the optical viewfinder, particularly when you’re using a long lens that renders the sun very large in the frame.
Anticipate the Movement of the Sun
Another thing to remember is just how quickly the sun moves across your composition.
Trying to follow it can become frustrating because you’re constantly adjusting the camera and recomposing.
Instead, figure out which direction the sun is travelling, set up your composition a little ahead of where it is now and allow the sun to move into the position you want.
Then you can concentrate on your subject and wait for the right gesture or moment.
Watch for Lens Flare
It’s always fun to create dramatic silhouettes, like this image of a Red-winged Blackbird in song. Silhouettes can be bold, graphic, and emotionally powerful. But, one of the biggest challenges when making images like this is dealing with lens flare.
Lens flare occurs when bright light from a strong light source, such as the sun, reflects off the elements inside your lens. Flare can appear in two common ways: as bright polygonal highlights scattered across the image, or as a washed-out haze that reduces contrast and clarity in part of the frame.
Fortunately, there are several effective ways to reduce the appearance of flare in your photographs.
Two ways to reduce lens flare
- Use a lens hood
Without question, the single most important thing you can do is use a lens hood. A lens hood helps prevent stray light from skimming across the front element of the lens, which is what typically causes the hazy, low-contrast type of flare. In many situations, a lens hood alone can dramatically improve image quality.
The second type of flare — the polygonal highlights — is caused by light bouncing between the internal elements of the lens. To minimise this, consider reducing the number of elements the light passes through.
Prime lenses often perform better in this regard than zoom lenses because they contain fewer glass elements. It’s also a good idea to remove any unnecessary filters, such as UV or skylight filters, which can introduce additional reflective surfaces.
- Adjust your image composition
Composition can help as well. If the scene allows, you can sometimes use part of your subject to block a portion of the light source, reducing flare while still keeping the backlit effect intact.
In the case of the Red-winged Blackbird image shown here, I waited for a soft, hazy sunset. The atmospheric haze naturally reduced the intensity of the sunlight just enough to allow for a clean silhouette without introducing distracting flare. Sometimes patience and timing are just as important as gear choices.
Understanding how flare occurs and how to control it gives you more confidence when working with strong backlighting and silhouettes, allowing you to focus on shape, gesture, and mood without technical distractions. Flare can be a problem whenever you’re photographing directly into strong light.
Of course, flare doesn’t always have to be a mistake. Used intentionally, it can also become part of the composition.
How Bright Should the Background Be?
There isn’t one “correct” exposure for a sunrise or sunset silhouette.
How light or dark you want the background is largely subjective. As long as your subject is rendered as a clean, dark shape against the brighter background, you have room to interpret the scene creatively.
You might want a deep, saturated orange sky in one photograph and a much lighter, softer background in another.
That’s one of the reasons I like manual exposure for silhouettes. It puts that decision in your hands rather than leaving it to the camera.
Start Looking for Silhouettes
Once you start thinking about photographing silhouettes, you’ll begin to see potential images very differently.
Instead of looking for detail in your subject, look for shape, outline, gesture and separation. Look for animals against bright skies, translucent leaves, brightly lit backgrounds and opportunities where the position of the sun could transform an otherwise ordinary scene.
Silhouettes require practice, patience and a willingness to trust your exposure decisions. But when everything comes together, they can be some of the most rewarding images you’ll make.
Good Luck and Good Light!
Steve & Nicole