Spotlights and Silhouettes

Jan 8

High contrast photographs in black and white and color.

My sister-in-law recently had a silhouette portrait made of my nephew while on vacation and the profile view was missing a distinct characteristic- his little curl at the back of his head. I love the idea of playing with light and thought maybe I could incorporate silhouettes into my photography offerings (and hopefully capture the curl :)).

I had previously explored using a snoot to create a spotlight effect as part of my monochrome portraits series. I wanted to take this a bit farther and explore a more true silhouette with contrasting subject and background (i.e. the appearance of solid black and white).

Black and White spotlight image with disco ball

Black and white images above are a combination of film and digital photographs.

Cameras: Nikon D850 + 24-70 f2.8

Nikon f5 + 50mm f1.4 + ilford HP5

Light: Godox v1 with mesh and snoot attachment

My work is full of high contrast images, and I really like the idea of adding silhouettes and dark shadows to this mix. Silhouettes are a bit unique in that the image is focused on certain details of an individual yet hides a lot of their features. I feel like it adds a little bit of mystery and interest to the photograph and makes for a special heirloom.

Black and white silhouette images above were photographed on my Nikon D850 + 24-70mm f2.8

Light: Nanlite FS 60 without modifiers

After testing these lighting scenarios, I set out to capture silhouette images of my nephew in order to capture the illusive curl! I don’t think there is a wrong way to capture a silhouette, but some styles rely more heavily on editing to get the solid black/white contrasting look. After chasing my toddler nephew around for a bit, I was able to capture this:

Silhouette of E with his lil curl included

I loved the results of these silhouettes and the spotlight portraits, so I decided to combine the two for a cute valentine themed portrait session. Offering these valentine silhouettes for a limited time, but plan to offer silhouette portraits year round.