Ask a photographer how to take a picture in which you can only see the outline of a person but not the face in the backlight.

This situation is called silhouette effect. Silhouette takes advantage of the light difference between the subject and the background. Generally speaking, you can use backlight at sunrise and sunset, because the light at this time is the softest and looks not dazzling, which is a good time to shoot.

Usually, when we take pictures, we always ask for accurate exposure and correct exposure of the subject, so don't shoot against the light. However, the silhouette effect is just the opposite, it underexposed the subject and highlighted the outline of the subject.

The shooting method is relatively simple. Use manual exposure M file or aperture priority A file, and set the camera's metering mode to evaluation metering, that is, overall average metering, to ensure that the metering value is the average value of the whole picture range. Due to the high intensity of background light, even if the whole body is exposed normally, people will have a very good silhouette effect due to underexposure.

In order not to keep too many details of the subject, we can press the exposure compensation key and lower the exposure value 1/3-2/3 to make the outline of the subject more clear.

It is worth noting that the silhouette effect is usually shot in a backlight environment, which may cause glare and needs to be avoided. The effective method is to avoid shooting point light source, and it is also a good choice to install hood.