Nude Silhouette Photography
The above nude silhouette image was taken from a shoot I did a few years ago for an Italian cosmetics company to be used as their advertising campaign that year for some body care products. The lighting is essentially very simple because it all comes from behind the model but there are a few tricks and good uses of technique that help to create the perfect nude silhouette effect.
First of all it did help having a particularly large studio space to work in so I was able to set up everything as I liked without problems. The biggest headaches of working in small spaces are as follows:
1) Significantly greater difficulty in controlling the light and seeing it bounce in the wrong places
2) Much greater risk of flare from stray light entering the lens
3) Sometimes being forced to use an undesirable focal length as you try to squeeze everything in
4) In worst cast scenarios it can even be difficult to compose the image as you want
We have all been in situations when shooting a nude model where studio space is a serious issue and sometimes there is just no choice other than to make the best of a bad situation but ideally you should really be making sure in advance that the shooting space is big enough to do the job properly.
N.B a poorly shot nude silhouette due to technical difficulties can look really bad, so make the effort and do your research to avoid looking like an idiot…
I took this nude silhouette picture using the 80mm lens on my Hasselblad, since this is my favourite choice for images of nude models and is roughly equivalent to a standard 50mm lens on a 35mm camera, however I much prefer to the proportions of a medium format image. With the 80mm lens on a medium format camera I find it produces an effect that seems to make the curves of the body a little rounder and the legs a bit longer but all in a flattering manner and the same rules would apply wether shooting fine art nudes or glamour photography. Try shooting the same image with a telephoto and it will look flat but go wider angle and you risk producing a very unflattering and unnatural result with heavy distortion.
One of the biggest considerations with a nude silhouette image is flare because of all the light that is heading straight towards the lens. Many photographers don’t give enough attention to controlling stray light, which can ruin the contrast and sharpness of your images, so I suggest you invest in the best possible lenshood you can afford and preferably one with front masks that really help limit the amount of unwanted light that enters the lens.
There is an excellent PDF article about dealing with flare written by Hasselblad, which you can find here. N.B Why on earth 35mm camera makers don’t seem interested in producing professional quality lenshoods defies all logic if they are genuinely interested in quality but I can only hope the situation will improve at some stage. Contax used to make one for their 35mm cameras if you can still find one.
If you can’t fully control the stray light by means of a lenshood then at least try using suitably positioned black boards in front of the camera, so that the front of the lens remains in the shade. Modern multi-coated lenses are significantly better at dealing with problems created from stray light compared to the lenses from many years ago but even the best lenses have their limits so you should do what you can to make sure the flare doesn’t ruin your images. Remember that it might not be immediately obvious looking at the LCD screen on your digital camera, especially in a case like this with a nude silhouette, where the main subject is dark.
The actual lighting here was supplied by four powerful Elinchrom heads with two placed at different heights on the left and right hand sides firing back towards white boards placed like an open book at 90 degree angles so that the light is bounced evenly onto the white cove background.
The total power output in this case was around 6000 watts but the light fall off is substantial because it first has to reflect off the white boards and then the cove before covering a few meters and reaching a large screen of Rosco diffusion material that will reduce the power output by roughly 2 more stops.
Because of all this light being absorbed along the way your initial burst of power will now be reduced to much more manageable levels but of course if you only have a couple of 400 watt lights you will struggle and have to cut corners, which is not good. Although you can shoot a nude silhouette without the diffusion material behind the model the effect as the light hits her body won’t be as soft.
To get the right exposure shooting a nude silhouette you really do need a proper lightmeter and I always roll my eyes when I hear photographers saying they do it all by relying on the histogram in their camera. Using a good lightmeter is a far more efficient and accurate means of working with flash in the studio. Nowadays I work with a Sekonic L-758D which is a superb professional meter but any good meter that is accurate to 1/10th of a stop should be suitable.
To do this properly you really want to make sure that the light hitting the white cove is already even and you can do this by measuring all areas of that background with your meter to make adjustments as required. All being well the light hitting your sheet of diffusion material just behind your model will now be illuminated perfectly evenly with no fall off or bright spots that would require time consuming corrections in post production. This is very important when shooting a nude silhouette image or the final result will look sub standard.
On the day of the shoot I experimented with various options including reflector boards in front of the model but finally I used a simple trick of turning the head around on the meter, so the white sphere was pointed directly at the sheet of diffusion material and took a reading with the meter placed right next to the screen, so I was effectively metering to obtain a clean white background for the subject but without risking overexposure. The model was now be lit by soft moody light spilling gently around her body and the job was done. That’s how you light a beautiful soft nude silhouette.