How do novices take a good silhouette of wild animals?

Shooting wild animals, especially birds, requires waiting before sunrise or after sunset at the shooting location for two reasons. First of all, getting up early and leaving late allows us to shoot charming lighting effects in prime time. Secondly, you can take silhouette photos. In this article, we will introduce some skills and methods to shoot the silhouette of wild animals.

1, perched birds

Perched birds are an excellent way to take silhouettes. Like shooting a few minutes before the sun sets on the horizon. To shoot such a silhouette, you need to be close to the bird habitat and look for habitats or rocks with bird droppings, which is easier to attract birds than other random branches. To put the bird in front of the sun, you need to be in the right place at the right time, so you may need to move slowly without disturbing the bird. Among the kingfishers photographed, the sun is a little high, and sometimes you have to wait a few minutes for the sun to set before the subject is completely surrounded by light.

2. Sunset shooting

If the sun is too high, you may get overexposed photos. Therefore, it is best to shoot in the sun; When the sun approaches the horizon, it will darken rapidly. Another reason is to wait until the sun is very close to the horizon. If the sun is high, it may cause glare and halo around the edge of the subject, depending on the lens you use.

3. Suggestions on camera settings

For silhouette photography, many of the same principles apply as usual, but because silhouette requires the subject to be very dark, your camera settings may be different from usual. The camera's metering system may be difficult to understand the exposure you are pursuing. You may need to use the.

Strong negative value of-1 to -3

Exposure compensation, or shooting in manual mode and manually dimming the exposure. Noise may be a problem in silhouette photography, because there is usually a smooth color gradient in the background, which will increase noise. Try to make our ISO for silhouette photography lower than that for "ordinary" wildlife photography. For objects with many contours, you can adjust the shutter speed a little longer than usual, because the slight details lost due to the movement of the object will not be obvious in the contours, which will provide you with more light and allow you to use lower light.

ISO value. It is recommended to shoot birds at the speed of1100 second.

4. Composition mode

One of the biggest composition choices of silhouette photography is the position of the sun. Will the sun be included in your work or excluded? If you include the sun, will your topic be directly in front of it? If you like to take photos of subjects completely surrounded by the sun, you will see some such sample images in this article. If your theme is big enough for "under the sun", then all you need to do is try. The size of the sun doesn't change at all in your picture, but the size of the subject will change greatly when you get closer or farther away. On the other hand, if the sun is an element in the composition that doesn't directly touch the theme, we need to consider how it keeps balance with the wildlife in the picture.

5. Pay attention to the theme posture

Silhouettes are exposed for the background rather than the subject, which will make the subject underexposed. Therefore, the shape of the theme outline is very important. Animal photos can make great photos in normal light, but they may not be recognized in silhouette.

6, exposure or not exposure

Sometimes, you can take beautiful backlit photos, but you can't take a complete outline. If your camera has enough dynamic range, it can also be enhanced by post-processing. The subject does not face the sky directly. If my lens is overexposed, there won't be enough contrast between the gazelle and the grassland-especially in the corner opposite to the background shrub. So, I decided to expose it, so that I can at least see some details under the sky, even if it means that part of the sun will be overexposed.

7. Objects in motion

When animals start to move, things become more difficult, and you need a faster shutter speed. For example, birds in flight are generally recommended to use at least11000.

Second shutter speed, if the bird moves fast, the speed will be faster. In many cases, this means higher ISO. Sometimes you can also expose a little more to keep your shutter speed without putting ISO.

Raise to an unnecessary level.

For beginners, it is suggested to start with large birds such as cranes, because compared with small birds, their flying speed is slow and stable, and these birds will also set up nesting sites, which is an excellent practice place. If the sun is setting on the nesting tree, you are likely to see the beautiful outline of birds flying.