Silhouettes and Profiles In Photography

Capturing silhouettes with a camera can create some fascinating images. This crow was doing some fancy acrobatic flying up in the French Alps last summer. His outline shows how beautiful he is in flight.

It's much more difficult to see the fine detail of this hawk's feathers, but the size of his wings compared to the size of his head is impressive. The tree gives the otherwise bare picture some added interest. This hawk was flying over a newly plowed field in Switzerland last Spring.

Here is another silhouette of a bird, this time framed by trees overhead. The trees and size of the bird show him to be fairly high up. The trees also give a sense of the fleeting moment in which the hawk is viewed, as soon it will pass out of sight behind them.






Here more trees are framing a passing solitary couple of clouds. The profile of the tree closeup on the top left hand side sets the scene, while the trees further away almost provide a pathway for the line of vision, making the clouds all the more interesting. It begs the question: in a sky that appears otherwise clear, where did these two snippets come from?



Silhouettes can enhance the beauty of sunsets. The dark permanence of the land contrasts starkly with the ephemeral beauty of the fading but glorious light behind it.
The photo below is kind of fun. At first glance the silvery colors of the sunset are nicely set behind the tree-line. And then it might seem that the tall tree has leaped up above the others, almost as though it's trying to reach the setting sun. And then there's the crane, to the left, which might seem an unfortunate detail, but then it also emphasizes that the apparently unbounded strength of nature and the trees in this skyline are actually quite frail, at the mercy of human activity.
A frozen world framing a silvery cold sunrise.

Profiles are a great way to capture the details of a character. The beauty of this horse is shown nicely in this side shot. The gloss of his coat is lovely.



This fella looks both thoughtful and alert.
















The outline cast by the tree's shadow is fascinating and really adds to the tree's charm. It seems the most perfect Christmas tree.









The jagged peaks in this photo of the French Alps gives the image a feel of untouched ruggedness.

Framing a scene with profiles and silhouettes adds flavor to the overall effect of the photograph. The intimacy and muted color of the flowers close up provide sharp contrast with the vastness of the mountains in the background.






The stark bare trees next to the lake make the mountains and the oncoming weather look especially harsh, cold and hostile.
The detailed closeup beauty of the roses is not shown in this photo, but somehow their silhouette against the soft blue sky intimates a loveliness that might be greater in the imagination than it would be in reality.

It's fun to play around trying all sorts of ways of taking photographs, just to see what happens. Often when I photograph something I'm not convinced will look nice, I find a surprise.

Taking photographs in completely different and new ways opens my eyes to seeing the world in a fresh way. And that's a wonderful thing! Have you tried it lately?