How to take a silhouette effect with a mobile phone

Lead: The rapid development of mobile phones has brought us brand-new opportunities. The rich camera function of mobile phones makes it possible to take many photos that need professional cameras. In this issue, we will take a real shot with the cool Front MAX mobile phone to see how the mobile phone can take a silhouette effect.

Indoor skills

Silhouette photography can be subdivided into indoor silhouettes and outdoor silhouettes, so what are the preliminary preparations for taking silhouettes indoors?

Method 1:

1. Indoor lighting: As the name implies, it is to arrange indoor light. In the space with insufficient light, we can close the door of the room without turning on the light, and the window can be used as the background light source, because if there is enough light in the room, the subject of the photo will be fully exposed, so that the details of the subject will be fully displayed and the effect we need will not be achieved.

2. Photographing skills: Silhouette exposure generally requires a high background brightness, so as to form a strong contrast. At the same time, our focus is not on choosing the main body, but on the background light source, so that the main body of the mobile phone can be dimmed after metering, and the silhouette effect can be achieved. The limitation of this is that there must be enough light outside the window.

Method 2:

1. If the indoor light is insufficient and there are no windows, you have to manually arrange the light source yourself. First of all, the choice of lamps and lanterns should try to use DC LED lamps. Alternating current lighting will cause light ripples and affect the aesthetic feeling of the whole photo.

The way to take pictures in front of the light source

Shooting mode of light source reflection

2. Object placement: Place the photographed object in front of the light source. The distance depends on the size of the object and the light source, and the composition is reasonable. The light source is still selected as the focus to reduce the clarity of dark details.

The photos we got (cropped only)

Outdoor skills

Many people say that landscape photography is not suitable for too many later stages. Outdoor silhouette can provide us with more and better materials and can shoot better and more meaningful works. As mentioned above, we can use the morning light or sunset to get more outstanding artistic conception.

1. Scene selection: Choose an open place, the top of the mountain and the roof are good scenes, even the edge of the dense forest can be used as a photo scene, as long as the contrast between light and dark effects is highlighted. Silhouette shooting requires contrast between light and shade. At the beginning, the author took a detour and pursued the sun as the exposure point too much, which led to no satisfactory photos.

2. Photographing skills: When taking photos outdoors, the light may come from all directions, so it is particularly important to choose the location. We can choose at dusk, when the contrast is high, and at the same time, we can use the exposure compensation in the professional function of the mobile phone to adjust the details of the dark part to blur.

abstract

Silhouettes often show hazy beauty, and the content expression of photos can only rely on the contour modeling of the subject. We should pay great attention to the outline details of the subject, not other details. In the outdoor environment, focus on the secondary highlights, so that the exposure of photos will be more accurate. By controlling the size, position and incident angle of the light source, focusing on the object can also blur the details of the dark part of the object.

In fact, there are still many restrictions on cell phone silhouette photography. When the mobile phone is equipped with a large aperture, it has obvious advantages in normal use, but in manual mode, it will bring more trouble to the photographer because of the large amount of light when shooting silhouette. The methods adopted by the author are automatic shutter and automatic ISO, and then the dark details are hidden by adjusting the exposure compensation after focusing. This method is relatively simple and effective.

Many times, our photos will not meet our expected requirements. At this time, we can adjust the exposure and contrast by slight post-adjustment, and we can turn some bad photos into a qualified silhouette photo. Ordinary mobile phones will have photo adjustment function. Now mobile phones have simple retouching function, which can adjust the exposure, contrast and filter adjustment of mobile phones.