Friday Hometown Shootout -- Silhouettes

Silhouettes!  I don't have many from regular shooting.  In fact I only have one that comes to mind.

I shot this a while ago when I stepped out of my comfort zone to shoot my neice's wedding as a wedding gift...

BAGMAN:  "Because you were too cheap to actually buy anything!"

...and anyway, during the ceremony, I caught site of this guy, one of the groom's friends and I started moving around the church trying to get the right angle, tripping over people and trying unsuccessfully to be unintrusive.  I shot this just as the groom was placing the ring on the bride's finger so I completely missed that one and heard about it later:  "What were you thinking?!!  Missing the ring part??!!"  Which is why I don't like shooting weddings.

HERE ENDETH PART ONE

PART TWO:

"Ten Easy Steps to a Christmas Present your friends will love"

Silhouettes!  A couple of years ago, I started playing with making silhouette portraits as Christmas gifts and today you are all in luck because I'm going to give you the recipe for Christmas presents guaranteed to make mothers cry that good kind of cry that makes you know you did good.

Step One: take pictures of their children in profile against a bright sky or any flat blackground:

  In this case, I was shooting Barclay, who I have written about before and his brother, Will, adult children of my wife's best friend.

Step two: because you eventually want two framed photos facing each other you have to flip one...(or you could tell one of them to turn around when you first shoot, of course. Duh.

Step Three: using any digital photo program...it's not so sophisticated that you need Photoshop...most will do it...you cut out the sky part leaving just the head-area.  And you fill the entire area with black color.  (Or maybe blacking it out is really Step Four)

Step Five (or Four): Clean up the silhouette and copy and paste it over the background you want.

With Barclay and Will I started with a sunset because I had liked that effect before but hated it now and tried clouds instead.

Blah.  Also, I forgot to mention that first (Step one-half?) you need to have your frame in mind.

This can be fun, running around antique shops and yard sales trying to find a matching set of frames...preferably with oval mattes.  So I did have something I needed to match and the dorky sky stuff wasn't cutting it.  Here is the frame.

So I was looking for something greenish or goldish for a background.  So I guess that STEP THREE AND A HALF OR FOUR AND A HALF is: Find a background.  So I went around shooting gold bases of lamps, trees, even a gold shirt of Karen's.

This wasn't working out too well.  For awhile I thought about the green trees and considered that a black silhouette wouldn't have enough contrast but...HEY!...who says a silhouette has to be black.  I could match the gold in the frame with a gold silhouette. I felt really creative and out of the box and

AAARGH!  Worse and worse!  This was definitely going in the wrong direction!   So I lay down on the leather couch which is my favorite place to do almost anything and looked up to the heavens for inspiration...and noticed my ceiling fan.

SERENDIPITY!

And STEP SOMETHING OR OTHER:  Paste it, print it, frame it...I guess that was more than one step but I'm sure you've got it figured out. 

And the final result is below.  Actually I never shot both final framed prints.  The only pseudo-real shot I have is of Barclay and it is actually made up of photoshop layers I was using to get an idea of what it would look like before I blew a bundle on paper and ink.  But it is close to what the final product looked like.  And, yes, Barclay and Will's mom got teary when she saw it. 

This Christmas I am working on one for my neighbors, Steve and Nancy.  They are always doing stuff for us, lending their truck, etc.  And last spring I noticed a rare moment when both their sons were home at the same time and I called them over and shot them against the sky and swore them to secrecy.  I have the frames but not the mattes.  More yard sale fun.  Or I'll have to learn to cut oval mattes which scares me. 

But there is no copyright on this and despite my inability to count steps it is pretty easy.  I thought briefly about submitting this to Good Housekeeping's Holiday Craft issue but realized I need technical assistance to figure out how many easy steps there were.  And I'd rather share it with y'all instead anyway.