How can I capture shower mist in a backlit silhouette photo?
Asked 8/16/2018
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2 answers
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I want to photograph a person standing under a shower so the body reads mostly as a silhouette, with visible water mist/spray around the skin. The main light is a frosted bathroom window behind the subject. When I use longer exposures, the mist just turns into haze and disappears. Front lighting or on-camera flash lights the subject too much and creates reflections in the tiles, while side light doesn’t seem to show the mist well. I’m using a Canon 1200D with the 18-55mm kit lens and 55-210mm zoom. What setup or technique will make the mist visible while keeping the silhouette look?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
7y ago
2 Answers
1
You have set up a non-sequitur, visually.
This is a teaching moment. You're going to learn a lot with this exercise. This is portfolio material to be sure. It's definitely a "How to do it" tutorial.
Here's what you're up against:
As you have correctly concluded, a silhouette is back lit. Transparent liquids will show as "dark-line" when back lit. That is dark against a white background.
Frozen, the image of the droplets will be high contrast. A time exposure will allow the light background image to "drown-out" the dark droplets against the light. The result will be seen as an average "grey" for the moving dark droplets against the nearly-white background, if at all. The fix is to use a faster exposure to hold the dark-edged droplets in the mist to resolve themselves retaining contrast.
However…
Front-lit transparent liquids show as "white-line" when photographed. That is white against a dark background.
Combining the dark-line back-lit image with a white-line front (or oblique) lighting begins to cancel-out the effect between the two "contrasting" lighting techniques. In effect, you are trying to show white-on-white and thus balancing the effect of one will negate the other. The long exposure will diminish the silhouette effect of the mist.
Conclusion: You have a VERY delicate (light) balancing situation.
Comment: Be kind to your model and use a mannequin to set up the lights or she will look like a prune when you're ready to take the shot.
Tip: The reflection from the shiny tiles behind the lights can be killed with a drop-cloth or curtain to catch the spill and absorb it. The light you're using for the silhouette placed in front of the glossy tiles will still be effective for providing the background illumination for the silhouette effect desired.
Originally by user21789. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user21789
7y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Use a much faster exposure. In this setup, the mist is effectively seen as dark-edged droplets against a bright backlit background. With long exposures, those moving droplets blur together and average into a gray haze, so the texture disappears.
To make the mist visible, you need to freeze the droplets with a short shutter speed and as much backlight as possible. Stronger light from the frosted window helps a lot. Also, give the spray some darker areas behind it when possible—mist can show better against a dark background than against only a bright window.
So the practical approach is:
- use brighter backlight
- use a fast shutter speed instead of multi-second exposures
- keep the subject mostly backlit for the silhouette
- avoid frontal light that causes reflections and fills in the silhouette
- compose so some of the spray is seen against darker tiles/background, not only the bright window
If light is limited, you may need higher ISO, but that can add visible noise on the 1200D.
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AI7y ago
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