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Silohuettes

What if you were to take a backlit scene and you under exposed it intentionally? So again, backlit light on trying to expose for a lot of the elements. But what if I intentionally under exposed it and rendered the dark areas completely black? Well, it becomes more dramatic and often more graphic, less detail, simple or statement. And so here is using light again as an idea. This is a shot of three elk in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. These elk are like house along the road there, so tame. This is photographed with a fairly small lens. Maybe a 72 200 beautiful antlers open tundra, beautiful mountain backdrop. Sun is rising, front lit. No detail, no shadow detail whatsoever on any of those three. You can see my, uh, my own shadow in this image. I would later cropped that out. All right, so I'm not advocating that you all go out there and you get trampled to death by elk. So here what I did don't follow what I did I After taking the shot, I moved back down slow and low to the ...

ground and got on the exact opposite side of these three elk and I shot directly into the sun, using the elk as blocking the sun. This is just a few moments later, and then I intentionally under exposed and this is the result, so it becomes a very graphically different image. Now. These elk are very tame, but they're elk and they are bowls, and they often like to Gore thing. So you have to kind of, if you really want to get the shot and you got trampled to death, don't blame me, but this is in fact, what I did. So I'm not saying it's great any better than the previous shot front lit. But often, when you're a working professional, you want to come away from any given situation with two or three really uniquely different images. And that's what I did in this case. So in this case, it was a very easy exposure. I just exposed toward the blue sky, under exposed from that point, until I rendered the animals into just a silhouette. This is under exposure of the sun, just descending through a crack in the ridge and again under exposing. It allows everything to go really graphically flat sunrise over a ridge in Japan. This is very this is actually looks funky on my screen and may in fact look funky on your screen. But this is one of those shots I have to tell you really quick story. It was a friend of mine of a standing on a ridge at sunrise near Mono Lake in eastern California in the winter. And when the sun came up and I put him in between the sun and myself, every follicle on that man's body was highlighted like a glow. And I thought, OK, this is the best shot in this whole Siri's, but because I'm compulsive right handed Virgo. That day I went home back to the little hotel that we were staying at, and I washed. My pants were covered in mud, and as I'm washing the pants in the hotel sink, I feel bulge in the pocket. And it was that roll of film, and I totally inundated with water, and I was so angry because I shot like, 15 rolls of film that day. But this is the one role I wanted. So I sealed in a plastic plastic bag and continued my trip for the next two weeks trying to keep that roll of film wet because I thought when I returned to Seattle, maybe it could process it and salvage it. But it came out in all sorts of Lourdes colors, and it just looked bizarre. And I kept it in my files for 20 years to run my knee. What an idiot I was for washing my pants with a roll of film in it. And every time I saw, I just cringed because it was a beautiful scene. And then digital came along and I thought, Well, maybe I could scan that really bizarre looking photo and tweak it digitally in restore it and in fact, I did it. But you could still see that there is a little funky, but it looks far better than it did for 20 years in my father. Do as I say, not as I do, I say injury, continuing the silhouetted nature of these images. This is a captive cougar photographed with the sun setting behind it again. I under exposed it just to get that rim light, that really emotionally impactful kind of danger kind of photo. That's what you get. You know, it's hard to tell us a cougar, but you know, it's a predator that can kill you. And that's what's important by under exposing. It just emphasizes the that moment that you know mysterious predator in the night, so to speak. So you know, we all have our devices to play with. The image under exposing it makes it a little more graphic. This also has the story, these air to bison up in Lamar Valley, photographed from a road at sunrise. It's so cold that their body is just admitting all the steam. The sun is directly behind the body of the bison on the left, and so it's just glowing with this sunrise light. It was so cold that the Ranger that was standing next to me kept on saying art, it's 30 below zero. And you know, initially I wasn't too cold until he told me 30 below zero the third time. And then I started really losing feeling in my hands. But it was because it was so cold that that body was dis emitting all the steam, which is obviously what made the shot. But this is a case where I would a spot read off the highlighted steam coming off its body intentionally under exposing the blue sky beyond. And, you know, intentionally, you know, letting go of any detail whatsoever in the body. It makes it much more graphic, much more memorable image, and you simply you know, it's all about the steam in the light and that silhouette. This is a guanaco in Patagonia Sun is setting. I'm using the body of the mother to block the direct light of the setting sun, and it gives a nice little rim light on the baby standing below the mother. So all of these shots, you know they're there intentionally shot with the light in mind. What's the best angle? One of my great colleagues, Galen Rowell, made this image famous. He's got a much better shot that I I do of this, but it's backlighting. The spring waterfall that comes off one of the great walls in Yosemite National Park backlit. These are friends of mine that we're hiking along the Hawaiian Island, a big island of Hawaii. When there was Ah, lava outburst, the lava is coming down off pale, a hitting the cold waters around Hawaii. And when the superheated lava hits the ocean steam rises and the light from the lava is being reflected into the steam that's caused by that reaction. So this is probably a two second exposure there, silhouetted out of necessity. If it was any longer, they would be just totally formless. But it's back lit silhouettes, uh, same model. I've been doing a lot of nudes in in the field, and I thought it would be really cool to have a nude human form silhouetted against that primal, primeval effect of lava hitting the ocean. But what I shouldn't Well, I guess I could reveal the fact that there was a group of tourists right below him so engaged in photographing the lava. I'm just thinking, if they ever turned it looked away from the lava, they would be shocked to see ah, large black man nude standing over them. But fortunately, they were also engaged with love that they never did. And there was never a heart attack. Okay, And that's actually a shot that John Gringo did of me at sunrise along the Salar in Bolivia, which was one of the destinations that the TV show travels Edge went to. So it's a good use of backlit, silhouetted and using me to block the the direct line of sight with son. I mean, obviously you can use lens flare as an artistic element, but more times than not, I find lens flare really distracting. And so I love to put my main element, as John did with me, right between the Sun and the photographers position. Here's a shot of the devil's marbles in central Australia, and I had my assistants 10 in between them to make a kind of a graphic statement about these rocks. Unfortunately, there was a slight tremor in the Outback, and those rocks came together. And that's when John got a new job. Um, no, that's a joke. That's that Nobody got hurt. But it is. I often use humans to so scale, and in this case, these are beautiful rock formations out there on this table land. And there's probably 30 or 40 of these giant monolithic rocks. Great subjects for the camera. Scylla weight silhouetted baobab trees. So folks out there I'm not shooting these shots to illustrate a class that I would someday give during a webinar thes air. How these air subjects that I'm using in my archive eyes how I've made my living over the years. And so I'm showing you what I do when I'm out there. And I've just pulled these photos from the archive to illustrate these points of light. Baobab trees have this beautiful. They're almost shapes that you would think a child would draw to draw a tree. Their giant water vessels there Probably 8200 feet in the air there, full of water because most of the year baobab trees are in a very arid land. But during the rains they just suck up the moisture that falls in the torrential rainfall. And they just are these big, bulbous trees, beautiful form. And at the base of the trees are Zeb booze, which are the oxen of Madagascar. So it's a very simple form, silhouetted, intentionally under exposed intentionally just to create that silhouetted effect. Which is exactly what I've done with these Carter and cactus along the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. And a simple, almost black and white Well, yeah, very black and light blue image of a vulture warming itself in the early morning light on a cactus. Really simple and graphic. Oh, okay. That's all I have to say No, I actually have a lot more light. I'm just going to keep moving here. Ah, this is the Panton Ero Marsh. Uh, Panton Arrow horses of those cowboys in Brazil. So you can see I'm shooting a lot of variety that panton arrows as a wake up. They're literally pouring themselves really ugly brown coffee. Ah, they I'm sitting in the shadows, photographing there, ignoring me silhouetted in a fairly complex seen into, you know, just lights and darks, which I often am doing and again shots. Do you have a thought? Do you have a question? Go ahead. I have a question from one of the studio audience. That's, uh, who is desperately trying to get the microphone out of the way. Go. Okay. Ask your question and make it very clear and sustained. Can you tell us about metering in these backlight silhouettes situations? Would you meet her the subject and under exposed that or somewhere else and overexposed that Okay, that's a great question. What I almost universally, if I'm doing is I'm looking in the scene. Okay, So these air, actually, I taught a workshop years ago for, uh, people that love horses. And believe me, there's a lot of people out there that love courses. So we went down to a ranch in Brazil, north of Rio de Janeiro. These air and the loosen, I think Andalucian horses. I don't I don't want a 1,000,000 e mails telling me I've got it wrong. Just say you're wrong and area. These are beautiful horses. Very expensive horses. They breed them along the coast. Um, and these are the the handlers, the people that will take him out and write him every day. It's great, son Rod. You know, sunrise over the South Pacific. Where would I have read me to read in this image? Where would you think? Okay in that blue sky. And it's hard for me to point because I don't Okay, this may be a first raising my hand. I'm gonna hold it there because I know there's a delay. See where my finger is. That's where I would read it right in that blue sky. So that's my starting point. And then I'm gonna intentionally under expose from that point. But if I read if I took exposure on the dark elements and under exposed from that I mean, I think all the you know it would be just vastly under exposed and would be pointless. So I started the middle gray or the middle tones and under exposed. That's why did with these ah, young kids along the *** River in Mali who are washing their goats, they're washing their goats on a Sunday afternoon. And I found that as we traveled through Molly, that's that's what you dio. Very few people have cars, but on Sunday afternoons you wash your animals, you go down the river and the goats and the sheep know what's happening. So I intentionally under exposed just to emphasize the primary human form there. You know, if you started to see details in their skin, that backgrounds gonna be vastly overexposed and it would look like a mistake. These are women that are carrying water vessels from a remote village out in the thar desert of Roger Stan, and I'm under exposing its silhouette ing him intentionally. I love this shot simply because they look like Martians with these water vessels above their heads. And then I took a shot, and then I moved ever so slightly just to get the edge of the sun coming from the edge of the woman, as you see, and it gives it one more little surprise. So I'm just going to move through quickly because I know now that it's 12 o'clock and we'll want to get to questions. So backlighting, then under exposing from backlighting, gives you silhouette. And that's what's happening with all these shots. Camels along the Sahara Desert. Very simple graphic image.