Behind the Image: Silhouette at Sunset


Where the Image Invites Interpretation
Nikon F5 with a 17-35mm lens, exposed for 1/100 of a second on Fuji Velvia 50 ASA film
By Abrahm Lustgarten

Sometimes a silhouette can seem cliché, but it can also define a mood and sense of space in a way that many other photographs cannot. Without the detail of a well-lit subject—facial expressions, brand-name clothing, and 1,000 other visual details—to distract the viewer, a silhouette shot can capture a moment better than three rolls of experimentation. A silhouette uses a recognizable shape—in this case a person and his bike—to set a scene and evoke a certain atmosphere. But beyond that, a silhouette's intentional ambiguity allows the viewer to fill in the missing details on their own, drawing from their own ideas, memories, and personal experiences, much like imagining a scene as it unfolds while reading a story, versus watching that scene portrayed in a movie. Accordingly, it invites the viewer into the environment of a picture more than it would if the subject was illuminated.

For this picture I stopped with a friend to enjoy an exquisite sunset before we concluded our mountain bike ride. We were just a quarter of a mile from the road, but the hilltop and distant view made it seem like miles. I first shot a few frames of the scenery itself, but then I saw my friend, poised and ready to ride, and I thought the scene conveyed a sense of the potential energy about to happen. Using a Nikon F5 and a 17-35mm lens, which I had carried in a waist-pack, I walked up behind my subject and snapped off a few frames before he noticed I was there. This shot, exposed for about a hundredth of a second, was taken from just a few feet away.

To expose a silhouette properly it's important to manually take your light meter reading from the background light—which is the real subject of your picture. If you allow your camera to auto-expose the picture as you frame it, the camera will likely try to shed enough light on the foreground to illuminate the person in the frame, and thus overexpose the background sunset.

This picture would have required about one tenth of a second to capture the cyclist, but only 1/100th to properly expose the background. I set the exposure before I even approached the picture I wanted to take—this way, only framing and focusing needs to be done before I let the shutter fly.

Abrahm Lustgarten in an internationally published, award-winning photojournalist whose work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, and Men's Journal magazines. He most frequently covers social, travel and outdoor adventure subjects, and is a regular contributor to Away.com. You can see more of his work at www.abrahm.com