How to shoot animal silhouette, and what shooting skills are there?

We often show the clean and sunny portraits of pets through special influence effects, and try to make them obey the shooting. Animals and people alike, silhouette effect will attract people's visual attention.

First, photography preparation 1, choose a theme and composition.

In the right light, everything can be outlined, but some themes stand out more than others. If you are taking a silhouette of a person, make sure that they are separated from any elements in the composition, so that they will "blend in". For example, if you shoot under a pier at sunset, make sure that your subject doesn't touch the supporting beam that supports the pier. In addition, look for a simple combination with clear lines and the lowest clutter, so that the outline will become the main focus.

2. Lighting equipment

The most important thing is to make sure that your subject is completely backlit, and don't use a flash, because you don't want the front of the subject to have light.

3. Camera settings

So far, manual mode shooting is the best way to achieve silhouette. When adjusting the settings, please use exposure meter to fully expose the background light, not the subject. You may find that a little underexposure will help, because it will give your subject a deeper outline. Then, the background exposure can be adjusted in post-processing.

If you shoot in automatic mode, you will need to apply the same metering method to get the correct background exposure. However, this can be very tricky, because in automatic mode, the camera is designed to measure the whole scene perfectly. However, by setting the internal focus of the camera in the background and half pressing the shutter.

Second, the photography position and exposure control This cat is located in front of the window and backlit. Walking around it, trying to use the wall as the background of the picture, but at this time its clear silhouette in front of the bright curtains attracted me deeply! I use the exposure compensation +2 file here to better consider the objects in the scene. Later, in order to show the silhouette and curtains, the default exposure value (no correction) was used for shooting.

Third, the depth of field and the choice of black and white. How to deal with the depth of field relationship between subject and background? Here, I choose to focus on the exquisite embroidered curtains. In addition, the artistic effect is achieved through a small depth of field, which makes the image have a three-dimensional sense and a soft outline.

4. Beautiful silhouette When the cat has its back to the photographer, the silhouette of its neck doesn't look obvious, and its ears stand on the top of its head. This posture gives people a feeling of "the cat is looking out of the window". However, some photographers like the photo of the kitten with its head slightly tilted, and its outline becomes more subtle, interesting and special.

Verb (the abbreviation of verb) chooses the photo. The outline of the cat is clear, the curtain effect in the background is beautiful, the existence of the window frame enhances the sense of form of the photo, and the inclined lines bring vitality to the picture.

When shooting animal silhouette, we should learn from the characteristics of "shadow play" and work hard on the depth of field and graphic composition. You can consider using black and white effect!