Exploring With A Camera ~ Silhouettes

I remember in elementary school that we made silhouettes for our parents on Mother's Day and Father's Day. We sat with a lamp on one side and a piece of paper tapped to the wall on the other. The teacher would then draw around our shadow on the paper; we cut them out and make cards. It's a lot easier to make silhouettes with digital photography!!

I wasn't surprised at all to find that I take a lot of silhouette images. I love taking pictures of the sky and I always try to include a few trees or branches to give the image some depth. If the light is just right; I get a silhouette of the tree. I'm warning you now this is a heavy photo post!!

The gorgeous colors of a sunset create a beautiful background for silhouettes!

 The soft pinks and purples of a sunrise are just as gorgeous!

This is one of my favorite sunrise silhouettes. I like the layers in this photo; the sky, the tree line, a layer of fog, the tree line reflected in the water, and then the lake itself.

 Cloudy days make good silhouettes if you can catch the sun peeking around the clouds.

I discovered a persimmon tree near my home and loved the shapes of the fruit and the branches. This is the only shot that I contrasted just a little to get the fruit darker. The other images are straight out of the camera.

Silhouettes are all about shapes. They need to be clear enough so you can tell what they are without seeing any details. I thought these two old buzzards looked like they were talking to one another.

You can even get a silhouette on a foggy morning.

Even the smallest things create beautiful silhouettes. I took this from ground level looking up at the beautiful blue sky. The darker blue spots are blurred tree leaves.

Here are some examples of other silhouettes I've taken.   I was shooting for the water drop, didn't get close enough, but I did get a silhouette of the blades of the windmill.

The blue hour in the morning and in the evening is a wonderful time to get gorgeous silhouettes. According to Wikipedia the blue hour is "the period of twilight each morning and each evening where there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness." For more information about the blue hour check out The Blue Hour Site. You can even calculate when the blue hour is in your area.

I hope you've enjoyed these silhouettes. I've linked them to Exploring With A Camera at Kat Eye Studio. Her February exploration is about silhouettes. She has a wonderful post on capturing silhouettes you should check it out. Just click the button below.

I want to make a disclaimer here. Silhouette is a very hard word to spell. As luck would have it, my spell check is not working on this post!!  So, please, ignore any misspelled words!!