Silhouette photography can be a lot of fun and quite artistic because of this and it’s not really that hard to master. However, it’ll still take a bit of practice.
To take effective silhouette images you’ll need to use pure back lighting. This means the lighting has to come from behind your subject. You don’t need any fill flash or reflectors. You just need the natural light that’s available in the scene. You’ll have to focus on your subject so that the outline of the silhouette is pretty sharp. Using a large aperture such as f8 and higher is a good start. This will enable you to capture the background in focus too.
For example, if you’re taking a photo of somebody on a beach at sunset, you’ll be using the sun as the source of light, but make sure you don’t point the camera directly into it. A tripod could be useful to keep the camera steady since you might need a pretty long exposure. Try a few shots and see how they look. What you should see is a dark silhouette and the sunset in perfect exposure.
These silhouette photos can be quite intriguing and mysterious especially since each viewer will be able to interpret them differently. Just remember to utilize back lighting and expose the background properly. You should be able to get the hang of it pretty quickly after a couple of practice sessions.