Weekly Photography Challenge – Backlighting

Light is the key to photography – without it, we’d be pretty hard pressed to make any images at all. They are also many kinds of light – hard light, soft light, front light, side light, overhead lighting and one that I use often to add more drama to my images – backlighting.

Backlighting can be used to create dramatic shadows.

Weekly Photography Challenge – Backlighting

This one is pretty straightforward. Find a subject where the light is behind them – voila you have backlighting. While that part is easy, make sure you get a good exposure. If you want a silhouette, underexpose the subject a little. If you want the subject properly exposed you might want to increase exposure a little.

Here are some tips and ideas:

• Using Backlight in Nature Photography
• Three Types of Light: Diffused, Backlight and Reflected – What are They and When to use Them
• How to Create Backlight or Hairlight outdoors with Natural Light
• Rediscovering Backlit Subjects

Foliage and flowers make great subjects for backlighting.

More use of shadows and backlighting.

Any translucent objects look great with backlighting – it enhances their colors.

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge. Sometimes it takes a while for an image to appear so be patient and try not to post the same image twice.

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images with the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.