Thanks for the great feedback on ideas for posts! Now to just plan ahead a bit. Besides the comments, I got a few emails with questions, and I will address one from my friend Liz. She found an image of mine that she liked and she asked me to break down the anatomy of the shot: what were my settings, time of day, lens, and I’ll add in my photoshop techniques I used. I don’t often add glitz and glamour in Photoshop, but this one has a little extra spice to it. First off, if you missed my tip on how to take a great silhouette shot, click here (middle of post) to read all about it. Shot on the left: ISO 500 f 13 ss 1/3200 evening sunset (sun behind their heads) 70-200mm 4.0 lens
Technically, the shot above isn’t STRAIGHT out of camera, as I lowered my exposure in RAW so you could see their clothing details better and I could explain my point. The sunset this day was only decent. Overcast, so not a lot of color. So I used some saturation to bring it to life. First, use your burn tool at about 15% to darken the details. You don’t want to see the pattern on his shirt or that her shirt is white. A true silhouette is just a dark outline filled in.
See, much better. I love how her necklace stands out.
I then wanted to change the color of the sky, so hit control+B for my color balance sliders. Below is a screen shot where I messed with the colors to get a nice yellow. Yellow isn’t usually in the sunset (that I’ve seen), its orange, but I liked the look of the yellow, so I went for it. You can see that my color balance formula to get this desired look.
I then needed to darken the details a bit more as it faded with the color mixture. Got out my burn tool again and used it at about 16% (I just picked a number). See the 16% just below this typing at the top of the screen shot? I also got my sponge tool and at about 30% brought out the yellow color just a bit more and "colored" with my sponge circle in the yellow area.
And there we have it!
This was fun to do! *For those that haven’t seen yet, I am headed to Utah at the end of May (27-28) and have a slot left for a mini photo shoot and I am also doing a beginners workshop. Come find out how to Say NO! to auto and much more! Check out this post for more details and let me know ASAP if you want in!
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Wow! Great tips! I love this tutorial, and this whole series. I have a silhouetted picture of my hubs and my oldest, when he was just 5, that I’ve been dying to do something with. I think I’ll have to play around with it. Thanks so much for sharing.
Great shot!!
Great tips Kristen! I love that shot! I have a Silhouette that I think I will have to try your tips out on. I hope it turns out as bright and beautiful as yours…I doubt it. But better than it was!
YAY! thank you! i feel honored that you blogged about what i wanted to learn about :) this is a gorgeous shot! i’m going spend some time and see if i can figure this out. and take a trip to the beach :)