In-depth backlight photography skills

Backlight is also called backlight. Backlight shooting, in layman’s terms, means that when shooting, the camera faces the direction of the light source (sun, light, etc.), and the person or object being photographed is between the camera and the light source. The general effect is as shown in the figure below. For beginners, backlight shooting is not easy to master, so this article brings together some relevant shooting experiences and techniques from professionals to help you shoot beautiful works.

Timing to get backlight

Generally speaking, evening is a good time to shoot with backlight. At this time, the sun is about to set (but don’t wait until it sets too low), but the light is still strong. Of course, you can also shoot with backlight at noon and other times, but generally you have to shoot from an upward angle.

When you are indoors, the window is a good source of backlight. You can place people or objects in front of the window and then take pictures. Backlighting can best highlight the outline of objects. You can place some still life objects on the windowsill for posing, which will have a good effect. In addition to natural light sources, you can also use artificial light sources to achieve backlight shooting, such as various indoor desk lamps. You can adjust the position of the light source according to your own wishes. Although the position of outdoor street lights cannot be adjusted, we can arrange the people or objects being photographed to achieve perfect backlight shooting.

Silhouette effect of backlight shooting

One of the most common applications of backlight shooting is the silhouette effect. There have been many introductions to the shooting of silhouettes. Here are a few simple tips.

1. Use spot metering and meter exposure against the bright part of the background.

2. The essence of silhouette photography is to pursue the effect of underexposure, so you can deliberately lower the ISO value when setting.

3. The purpose of white balance control is to make the white in the picture closer to the white perceived by the human eye, rather than the "real" white, and use this as a basis to adjust other tones. But in order to obtain the silhouette effect, we need a "wrong" white balance, which can be adjusted to a higher value.

Shooting clear people with backlight

A very wonderful effect of backlight shooting is that the person or object being photographed will have a wonderful outline light. However, when we shoot with backlight, we don’t always do it for the silhouette effect. Sometimes we actually want to take clear photos of people, but due to time, terrain and other conditions, we have to backlight, which often results in a "big black face" ". When you want to take clear pictures of people under backlight conditions, you can make adjustments from several aspects.

The first is metering and focusing. In the "Settings" of the mobile photography application, you can find the "Metering" option. After clicking it, there will be matrix metering, center-weighted metering, spot metering, average metering, etc. It is generally recommended to use spot metering or center-weighted metering. Contrary to the above-mentioned silhouette effect, here you need to appropriately increase the ISO value and lower the white balance value. When metering, you need to aim at the person's face and not against the bright part of the background.

In addition to the above settings, what is more critical is the application of flash. If you don’t turn on the flash, it may cause the person’s face to be very dark. If you turn on the flash forcibly, the light may be too hard, making the person’s face unnatural. There is a way to neutralize it, which is to use a flash, but use a tissue or other translucent object to cover the flash. This is like a diffuser, making the flash softer, and the people photographed will be more natural.

The third method is to use a reflector to fill the character’s face without turning on the flash. For non-professionals, try to use available objects around you as reflectors, such as white cardboard instead.

Another alternative way to fill in light is to let the character hold a luminous object in his hand, such as a lit mobile phone, tablet screen light, candle light, etc., which will have unexpected effects.

Light painting - special backlight photography

The so-called light painting is to quickly wave some luminous objects (such as small flashlights, mobile phones with bright screens, etc.) at night or in a darker environment. Fluorescent sticks, etc.), when shooting, it will produce the effect of "painting" with light. This is actually considered backlight photography. The camera faces the light source, but the difference is that there are no people between the light and the camera.