Lights off - Let us play with the Light!
If nothing works as a subject - a good Silhouette will fix it. Even if it is your own. Let's talk about that for a moment.
Good images need more than just great landscape or architecture. The human eye will look for someone to identify something extra to look for. Hopefully a human.
We light painters are often more engineers to start with and learn image composition later. Once we master the techniques we move to better pictures ;-)
Sorry, not all light painters but most ;-)
Silhouettes? Here are some of the last studio plays I have not shared yet.
Here it's super simple to explain to the model what I am going to do. The first good understanding comes from simple light paintings like that. The effect is great and the first wooaaah is certain.
If you look across the Light Painting worlds output of the last years you will see quickly that it's always more interesting to see a human in the image. As a LightPainter, you don't always have a model at hand. What's happening then: a friend Light Painter has to model. They don't want to show their faces so you are left with one option. Just stand there please and create a cool Silhouette.
Feet apart and the hands a bit away from your body. Everybody can be a model. In many of my light paintings, I do just the same. It is fast and simple - often it looks pretty cool as if the Alien abduction is taking place right now!
If you don't have much space you just direct your flashlight towards the wall and bam you have your sexy silhouette.
Some may build this technique up to an art form. Many like the endless leg shadows. I do that's for sure. Depending on how far behind you stand behind the model the shadows elongate to eternal long legs. Love it.
For shadows to have a sharp edge you need to hold your flashlight still and do not move the center of the flashlight. You can move up and down a little bit to light up behind the head or hands. With a bit of smoke, it will look really cool and may get you some surprising cool lines coming from the flashlight. Like God's rays.
Smoke makes every Sihouette cooler!
The one on the left works particularly well because we got some structure in the shine behind the people. That's what you want to make it interesting.
This is a little more complicated outside because of the wind. If you don't have wind of finding a sheltered corner it's awesome. What you can use is even just some dust or sand to through up when you light the silhouette.
Of course, if you have a proper model they pose differently. They usually know how to present themselves and how isolated legs and arms should be in order to see a human shape.
See the difference from left to right? We have the most amazing light painter (Pala Teth) posing but sorry Regaen looks much cooler on the right. She knows how to pose.
So of course, even Pala looks amazing. If you invest in some research on posing you can even mal a silhouette look even cooler.
Try this and share with me what you come up with.
I hope it was also inspirational. If you have more questions please do not hesitate. I am happy to share my knowledge.
Gunnar Heilmann Photogrpahy
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