Make Powerful Photos: How to Shoot into the Light for Mood
Burnt trees, silhouetted against a bleak sky, make for powerful photos.
It’s easy to create powerful photos from relatively simple or commonplace subjects. In fact the more simple the subject matter, the easier it is to create a visually compelling composition.
Powerful photos, rich in mood and drama, can be created by photographing into a background that’s significantly brighter than the subject. Skies, snow, water and sand provide suitable backgrounds for silhouettes, particularly when the subject is backlit and forms a graphic shape in the composition.
I photographed this view of burnt trees in the Yarra Valley near Melbourne, Australia. By photographing into the light I was able to put the burnt trees into silhouette, emphasizing their graphic shape.
Likewise, by photographing from a lower viewpoint, I was able to depict the drama and the brooding mood I experienced when walking through this recently fire-ravaged landscape.
The very act of squatting down caused me to tilt my camera upwards to fit the tops of the trees into the frame.
Doing so creates distortion, particularly towards the edges of the frame, causing the trees to bend inwards.
Most noticeable when making photos with a wide-angle lens, it’s an effect I don’t normally embrace.
However, when it works it’s great.
In the case of my photo of burnt trees in the Yarra Valley, the inward bending of the trees on the edges of the frame helped to enhance the brooding mood within the scene.
How to Make Photos Into the Light
It’s good to remember that, the brighter the background, in comparison to the subject, the darker your subject will photograph.
Therefore, under high contrast conditions, your subject will render as a silhouette.
But that's not always a bad thing. As evidenced by the photo of the burnt trees, backlighting can be very effective in creating moody, atmospheric and mysterious photos.
It’s worth noting that, without making appropriate adjustments to exposure, photos made into the light will often cause your subject to photograph too dark.
Photos that are underexposed display a lack of three dimensional space, where the foreground and background appear to compress against each other.
Allowing more light to enter your camera will produce a more airy, spacious result.
To avoid underexposure, when making photos into the light, simply add one or more stops of exposure, above that recommended by your camera’s light meter, to achieve the optimal result.
Choose the Right Subject for a Silhouette
I think my photo of burnt trees in the Yarra Valley is a good example of a successful silhouette.
The graphic, almost lifeless nature of the trees and the fact that they’ve been photographed against a significantly brighter background is key to the success of this picture.
Opting for a black-and-white rendering of the original color image has further simplified the photo and created an even more minimalist composition.
Actually, I decided to add a subtle, warm tone to the image during post processing because I don’t enjoy making photos that are devoid of hope.
Imagine you were drawing this very same scene.
You’d start by drawing relatively straight, black lines that would become, progressively, thinner as they reached upwards.
You’d then join some of those lines together to form shapes.
Finally, you’d fill those shapes in with black and, Shazam, your trees would be drawn.
Have no doubt, a well constructed silhouette, where the composition is based upon line and/or shape, can produce very evocative results.
When trying to construct a silhouette avoid trees with lots of leaves as, under backlit conditions, those leaves will likely photograph as a great big black blob.
It’s for this reason that burnt or dead trees, with no foliage, make better candidates for rendering as a silhouette.
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Powerful Photos And The Secret Of Suggestion
I like to think that, in art, the concept of suggestion resides between those of reality and abstraction.
Most photographers are primarily concerned with documenting what they see as realistically as possible.
Abstraction is when the scene or object depicted is photographed in such a way that they are, at least at first, unrecognizable to the viewing audience.
“I feel that the Art Of Suggestion is a much underrated aspect of photography.”
I make use of suggestion in my own photography to engage my audience in such a way that will cause them to respond, on an emotional level, to how they feel about what they see before they recognize what it is they're actually looking at.
In the case of the above image, it's not so much the trees that are important to the success of the photo.
It's the design of the image, the actual composition, that’s become the subject matter of the photograph.
If you like to know more about subject matter in photography, check out the following posts:
The next step is when the mood, atmosphere or emotion that you've explored becomes key to the experience communicated in the photo you’ve created.
It’s a great way to make powerful photos, that move beyond mere photo documentation of the world around you.
Photography, at it’s best, must connect on an emotional level with your audience.
It’s the difference between the competent, postcard view of the world and a more personal, authentic and creative approach that I’m comfortable referring to as art.
