Backlighting

by Joseph T. Sinclair

In anoth­er arti­cle, I warned that you should always take pho­tos with the sun com­ing over your shoul­der. Tak­ing pho­tos into the sun or into a source of light cre­ates prob­lems for tak­ing a nor­mal photo.

As we all know, how­ev­er, there are excep­tions to every rule. In this case, the excep­tions you might want to con­sid­er to this rule are back­light­ing and sil­hou­ettes. Back­light­ing can cre­ate beau­ti­ful pho­tographs, and sil­hou­ettes (when intend­ed to be sil­hou­ettes) can be very attrac­tive too.

Back­light­ing can be beau­ti­ful in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the sun is low in the sky ear­ly in the morn­ing or late in the after­noon or ear­ly evening. If the sun pass­es through some­thing translu­cent in such sit­u­a­tions, it often makes the translu­cent sub­stance glow, which can cre­ate spec­tac­u­lar photos.

For instance, foliage (leaves) tends to be translu­cent. If you have the sun stream­ing at you through trees or oth­er veg­e­ta­tion in close prox­im­i­ty, you will often see a translu­cent glow. Even if the sun is low in the sky and is reflect­ing off foliage instead of pass­ing through it, you can some­times get an attrac­tive glow too. When the sun is high­er in the sky, you’ll get a nor­mal pho­to shoot­ing the same foliage.

The les­son to be learned here is that back­light­ing is nor­mal­ly unde­sir­able and will not pro­vides you with the pho­tos that you seek to take. On the oth­er hand, be aware that back­light­ing can pro­vide you with pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions if you stay aware that back­light­ing occa­sion­al­ly cre­ates attrac­tive effects.

As I men­tioned in the oth­er blog about hav­ing the sun at your back, it is very dif­fi­cult to get good pho­tographs of peo­ple oth­er­wise. Why? Because every­thing behind the peo­ple will be lit up with the back­light­ing (sun), and the faces and bod­ies of the peo­ple will be very dark. Shoot­ing peo­ple into the sun is per­haps the most com­mon mis­take that novice pho­tog­ra­phers make.

But if you want to get sil­hou­ettes, shoot­ing into the sun or anoth­er source of light is obvi­ous­ly the way to do it. The sil­hou­ettes might be of peo­ple, trees, vehi­cles, build­ings, or ani­mals. To shoot such sil­hou­ettes you need to have your light source (sun) be behind the sub­ject you are shoot­ing. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, it’s best to shoot sil­hou­ettes when the sun is low in the sky ear­ly in the morn­ing or late after­noon or ear­ly evening. Espe­cial­ly at dawn and sun­set the sun becomes is weak and you get a nice glow in the sky. That glow can be used to cre­ate some sil­hou­ettes that when appear­ing togeth­er with the glow can make very attrac­tive photos.

Anoth­er sit­u­a­tion where back­light­ing works well is when you use it togeth­er with very strong front light­ing. This works well indoors when you take pic­tures of peo­ple or objects. Just using lights from the front may not give you the best pho­to­graph you can get, and adding some back­light­ing or chang­ing shoot­ing posi­tions to take advan­tage of back­light­ing can often make the pho­to­graph better.

Out­doors it’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. Out­doors when the sun back­lights your sub­ject, it is very sel­dom that your sub­ject will also be light­ed from the front. Pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers use reflec­tors when they suit shoot sub­jects out­doors, such as mod­els. To shoot just one mod­el, they might use as many as five or six reflec­tors. Thus, the sub­ject is back­lit by the nat­ur­al sun­light and lit from the front by a reflec­tion of that sunlight.

Anoth­er way to get front light in an out­door sit­u­a­tion where your sub­ject is back­lit by the nat­ur­al light­ing is to use a flash. This is called a fill-in flash and works very effec­tive­ly for nor­mal cam­eras and nor­mal flash units. The flash units on phone cam­eras, how­ev­er, are extreme­ly weak and will not be effec­tive in this situation.

Using back­light­ing and using sil­hou­ettes are two tech­niques to avoid in nor­mal shoot­ing but to take advan­tage of in spe­cial sit­u­a­tions. It’s just a mat­ter of stay­ing aware.