It goes without saying that I love silhouette images. You get the shape and form of the figure, but the dark shadows obscure details. Nudes can still be mysterious, and portraits are full of intrigue.

For the word purists, a true silhouette would be just the outline of the form, and no detail at all of anything inside the edge lines. The amount of detail varies, but most of my images would be more accurately labelled near-silhouettes or pseudo-silhouettes, but that’s just awkward, so let’s assume a more lax definition for the term silhouette. I’ll save my thoughts on taxonomy like “high-key shadow” images for another post.

I’ve had a few requests for details about how I shoot my silhouette images, so I thought I’d explain some of the setup, equipment, and techniques I use.

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In the above image, which is good example of the style of the majority of my silhouette stuff, the setup is pretty straight-forward. The light is a large softbox place directly behind and very close to the model, and the camera is shooting directly into it, using the softbox itself as the background for the image.

Overhead view:

The only limitation with this setup is the size of the softbox — poses with arms out wide require turning the softbox horizontal, and then there is very little vertical room to work with.

When editing, I’ll either crop in the image to inside the edges of the softbox, or take a few seconds and paint white over the edges. When shot, the images look like this:

If I need a bit more width or height than I can get with the size of the softbox, I have a sheet of diffusion material in a light wood frame that is a bit larger. I’ll just place it in front of the softbox:

The closer the model is to the light, the more it “wraps around” the form, showing more detail around the edges. If the model moves farther away from the light, the edges will more quickly fall into shadow and you well get more of a true silhouette.

Slightly oblique poses will allow the light to cut across the form, so you get some detail of curves and shapes, while the side facing away from the light remains dark.

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Again, this gets even further away form a purist definition of “silhouette”, but this style is probably my favourite that falls within the broader terminology. When shooting these types of images, I’m always weighing the balance between shadow and nakedness — trying to find the right point between mystery and vulnerability.

On the technical side, there are a few guidelines to follow. I usually have the strobe set to somewhere around medium power — I usually try to shoot around f/8 unless I specifically want a shallow depth-of-field. If you are trying this setup yourself, do watch for lens flare. Try using a prime lens if you encounter flare, or changing your aperture.

I expose for the background, getting it almost blown out, watching the histogram. This usually results in the captured image being a smidge brighter than the end result — but when doing the post-processing, it’s better to darken the image than to have to lighten it. I’ll use a levels adjustment layer and adjust the endpoints of each colour channel to make the background pure white and so the darkest areas are just hitting pure black.

If you don’t have access to a full studio setup, try using a large window with a white sheet in front of it. You’ll need to make the rest of the room as dark as possible, but if it’s bright enough outside you should be able to get enough of contrast difference between the background light and the ambient light in the room to make a good silhouette. Try exposing for the background so it is just getting blown out, and then you can darken the figure if it needs it when post-processing.