Set up for a silhouette?

[johnsy]

I've been asked by a friend to take a photo of them as a silhouette with a dual coloured background.

I will have a D5000 with two flashes (yn465), wireless trigger, some coloured gels and a large white sheet for the background. The flashes will be aimed to light up the sheet so each side is a different colour.

Also go:
35mm nikon f1.8
18-55 nikon vr f3.5
70-mm Tamron f4

Any advice on how to get make the silhoutte as dark as possible, with the colour lights in the background?

 

[specialman]

Exposing for the flash on the background is the first step so work to your maximum sync speed to minimise ambient exposure.

Minimising the light bouncing around and hitting the subject is the next step - getting the subject far enough away from the background should help control this but unless you're inside a white shoebox, I doubt you'll really suffer from light hitting the person.

I expect that using gels on a white background you'll probably have to underexpose to get some saturation into the background exposure, so that should help turn the subject into a silhouette too.

 

[bryan elliott]

The first thing, is to make sure you have no ambient light affecting the photo, then set your camera to 1 stop or so below the background lights, then make sure your model isn't too close to background and your not getting any splash back or wrap. Hey presto you'll get your silloette

 

[bryan elliott]

The first thing, is to make sure you have no ambient light affecting the photo, then set your camera to 1 stop or so below the background lights, then make sure your model isn't too close to background and your not getting any splash back or wrap. Hey presto you'll get your silloette

From there you can then adjust your aperture to get disired effect, you haven't said if your going for a highish key type background or a midkey setup

 

[johnsy]

Thanks for the advice, I'll give it ago though will think it wil lbe trial and error to start with.