Offroading Home: GEO-tography: Silhouette

Photography of the "Geo" is what these sessions are about: GEO-tography. We look at them because as long as we are on the off-road most of us are taking photos, and as long as we are taking photos we might as well at least TRY to do a good job.

Are we photographers who need to go off road to get good photographs? Probably not… oh, let's call a spade a spade– mostly not. We're offroaders who either: want to prove where we've been or merely need to be able to remember where we've been.

This session is about a topic which all of us mostly overlook and most of us always misspell: silhouette's. They're not all that difficult to obtain, and most of us have accidentally gotten them unintentionally– some more than once – yes, you know who I'm looking at!

A silhouette is an outline that appears dark against a light background. Specifically, it is where the subject is seen as a black shape without detail against a brighter background.

Usually, with all of our automatic camera settings, if you photograph into the light, especially if the subject is directly in front of the light, you get a silhouette.

If you notice in the photographs below, most photographers prefer sunrise or sunset, when the sun is just on the horizon. That is when the sun causes the sky to be at its brightest and produces a greater contrast between the sky and the subject (and the sky is more-ther purdy).

If you do a search for silhouette (and spell it correctly) on Flickr it will find a million and 70 thousand photographs! A good example of those relating to the "geo" are below for you to look at and get ideas for your next ride.

The basic technique for obtaining silhouette's is not difficult; but, most of those below are not accidents and were not taken in "automatic" mode. The technique is more fully explained in the selection of resources which I've included after the examples.