Wireless flashes allow you to place your light source anywhere. It’s one of the easiest ways to create many exciting creative possibilities. If you try moving tethered studio monolights or wireless hot-shoe flashes off your camera and placing them behind your subject, you’ll see that you can get more dynamic and creative results.
One of our favorites is backlighting. Whether it involves using a single light source for backlighting or in conjunction with one or more other flashes, it’s a versatile shooting technique that any photographer should try out.
Below, we look at the different ways you can provide creative backlighting for a subject.
7 Creative Ways to Use Backlighting
- The Silhouette
- The Halo
- The Shadow
- The Fill
- The Rim Shot
- The Hair Light
- The Luminescence
The Silhouette
To get even, white backlighting such as this, place the flash about five feet behind a translucent material, such as a bedsheet or a soft box, then position your subject in front of the lighting setup to achieve a large, bright, and evenly lit background.
Make sure there is no other ambient light that will might leak fill light onto your subject. Let the backlight wrap itself slightly around the subject so you pick up only a hint of modeling and detail along the edges.
Want to add color to your background? Simply place a colored gel over the light source.
The Halo
This technique is similar to the one described above, except the light source is placed much closer to the translucent material. This way, the light will not spread as evenly as before and will be concentrated on a hot spot.
Place your subject directly in front of this hot spot and you’ll get a gradual light fall-off effect. Alternatively, you can use a snoot and place the light source immediately behind the subject to create the same effect while shooting against a plain background.
The Shadow
For this dramatic and ominous look, place the light source behind the subject and position it to face the camera. Unlike the examples above, this technique is generally more effective in low-key (darker) scenes.
The Fill
As with the shadow technique, simply place a flash behind your subject to block the light—just enough to create a backlight while still allowing some light to leak towards the front. And then, add a faint light source to one side of the camera (in this case, camera left) to provide some fill light. This adds slightly more drama and detail to your image compared to a full silhouette.
The Rim Shot
Backlighting can be mysterious and intriguing. In this shot, the light source is placed in front of and above the subject, creating a subtle study in form, light, and texture—which is also known as rim lighting. What you see is just a hint of what’s there, but that can be enough. To avoid light falloff and flare, use either a snoot or barn doors (if you’re using monolights) to control the light.
The Hair Light
Backlight can make hair look like it’s virtually on fire. In this case, an orange backlight source is placed behind the subject and positioned to face the camera, while a key light illuminates her face. It’s a nice dramatic touch, and your subject’s hair will look terrific!
The Luminescence
All of the above examples show what happens when you backlight a solid subject. Well, backlighting translucent subjects can also produce interesting results.
Look at how backlighting gives these fruit slices a burst of bright color! To achieve this shot, the slices of fruit are placed on a white translucent surface with a flash source shining up from below. This, too, is a form of backlighting and it helps produce bright, eye-catching colors.)
Any translucent subject (a glass of wine or a bottle are also good examples) could be rendered dynamically by placing a diffused light source on the other side of it, relative to the camera’s position.
This is just a starting point. If you already have a wireless flash or strong ambient backlighting, start placing your subjects in front of it and experiment. If you don’t have one, what are you waiting for? Try it out!
