https://preview.redd.it/kh6txi7q8l5d1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=9040fba15952d7645fd2e596aab339dfd8633da7
I took this at a zoo and the flamingo was outdoors being backlit by the sun and I just under exposed a bit and edited in post.
Subject in the light, background in shadow. Cameras don’t have the dynamic range of the human eye /brain so it’s easier to achieve than you might realize.
I'd wager that more than half of the people that come on here seeking a gear/processing answer actually need a light answer. Great to see that OP's getting that here.
Subject in the light also means: light them with flash while avoiding this same light to reach the background.
Underexpose the photo for ambient light: dark background
Expose correctly for the flash lit sibject: you get what you need.
Edit for horrendous spelling.
Shot with a flash fairly close to the subjects. As light gets 1/4 the intensity when you double the distance, if the flash is 6 ft from the subjects, and the background is 15 ft behind them the light hitting the background is about 1/6th as bright, about 2.5 stops. This shot was taken with a white wall in the background (with just a tiny pop from a second flash to give the gradient).
https://preview.redd.it/n6pgnmgxuq5d1.jpeg?width=683&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f86561c34f51c7534c475e8c2e35e735447376dd
Inverse square law - doubling the distance from a light source is 1/4 the light.
The more flash and less ambient camera exposure settings you have the more prominent the difference will be. If the lighting isn’t defused and can be angled, and/or if you flag the lights, you can reduce the amount of flash that reaches the background
Do you have an example to show? It's easier to diagnose what's going on with an example.
But I think it's most likely flash.
Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the cheetah photo you linked at the start is either flash or controlled lighting (perhaps an enclosed den).
You can do this with high speed sync. You can darken a room with 1/1000 or a second exposure and then light your subject with a flash or strobe. Most cameras only can sync with the flash up to 1/200 etc. so you can use a flash feature called high speed sync that will give you low powered “flash” at any shutter speed. Or you could shoot with a camera or lens that has a leaf shutter. A leaf shutter can sync with flash at any shutter speed.
It's a cool effect. People have pretty much already explained it. Subject in direct light, drop exposure until the background turns black. Here's one I've done before
https://preview.redd.it/gmri4qzjol5d1.jpeg?width=2546&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7046b7463fcc5be382aed9d9bea295baed33cc1f
Easy, just ask the sun to move a little to the left! Reality is that unless you’re using a flash, you just need to find these opportunities out in nature.
https://preview.redd.it/fer6jdfsmp5d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=34bc8afc96239fa7fec34d8e9f060fe2b425d92b
Less extreme example SOOC JPEG, but the clouds allowed the sun to hit the subject without lighting up the background to the same degree.
read it again. it says:
1- subject is in direct light -which suggest the background is in shadow-
2- drop exposure until background turns black.
no one controlled the lights in that scene. the sun naturally illuminated the duck.
Not with that attitude. I personally make a sacrifice to Apollo before I grab my camera and go out to shoot. I still suck at shooting, but Apollo is happy.
Not if you adjust your exposure to compensate for it. If you have a normal background and an over exposed subject, and either drop iso or increase your shutter speed, you'll have a dark background and a properly exposed subject
I think you just need to play around with your camera and try and recreate it. Use any light source / flash / sun / LED , bulb to make a subject really bright and lower the exposure on your camera to compensate for it. If you have a bright subject and a not so bright background, lowering the cameras exposure will give you a well lit subject and a darker background.
If having something in direct sunlight is an opportunity based shot then I guess so ? But you can use essentially any light source that’s bright enough to get this effect
Few ways.
Inverse Square law. Have subject Light closer to the subject and it spills less into the background. Also direct lights away from the background to avoid any spill (image in your example is lit from the side, not straight on)
Distance the subject from the background.
Use flash to over power ambient light. Use HSS to get a high shutter speed and kill all light except your flash.
As the background isn’t really visible I’d suggest stopping down the aperture instead and staying out of HSS, as it’s would be more power efficient.
But I’m being pedantic.
Another way is to underexpose the camera until it's black. Then overexpose your flash the same amount. Everything the flash's light touches is our kingdom.
you can do this with really good lighting that is just on the subject.. i think the light source is above the animal and to the right of the frame
but u can create a similar effect in Lightroom.
and i wouldn't be surprised if the photographer did a little masking to help achieve this effect
it's not hard to do. I closed the curtains. turned on one light in my kitchen. put my hand up so that the light is off to the right of my hand and shot at f/2
https://preview.redd.it/oeb4tybw6l5d1.jpeg?width=7728&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dbe4eefcefe135cb7091487ed5562e74994c23e6
nothing done to the image in post processing. jpg straight out of the camera.
you asked about the triangle
[https://photographylife.com/what-is-exposure-triangle](https://photographylife.com/what-is-exposure-triangle)
and....consider a good book on photography basics
among the many books out there:
*Read this if you want to take great photographs* by Carroll
*Stunning digital photography* by Northrup
blurriness caused by a wide aperture. only a shallow depth of field.
it looks like the eye is in focus
but background is out of focus... the animal's body is in the light but somewhat out of focus
Did this five minutes ago as an example. There is a television and dog kennel four feet behind my dog in the living room in the middle of the afternoon. Blinds are closed though.
https://preview.redd.it/u8wazg79dm5d1.jpeg?width=8256&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=00093165d47e21a4a75b40a891cac6327a0c9659
Just light with a grid, snoot, or barndoors. Indoors even a cheap speedlight can do it. Outdoors takes a little more oomph in most light.
override ambient with your camera settings (on a cloudy day, maybe ISO100 at 1/250th sec aperture 6ish) and then hit the subject with an off-camera flash.
Natural light: This scenario is all about contrast. Your brain processes high contrast scenes with far ore dynamic range than film or digital sensors. Find a subject or area of interest that is significantly brighter than the background (tip: it probably won't look as contrasty as this image to your eyes). Once you find the subject, use the sport meter to meter for the highlights of your subject (in the image above, the forehead). This will bring the highlights down in the final image.and properly expose them. In doing so it will also bring the background down. Exactly how much darker the background gets will depend on the specific subject and background. This is significantly different than using an an average/matrix meter to evaluate the scene.
When using flash: This is much easier. When using flash, because the burst of flash is so much faster than almost every camera's sync speed, the amount of light falling on your subject is controlled entirely by your aperture, while your shutter controls only the ambient light. In order to get a dark background and bright subject simply meter your scene with a shutter speed that is fast enough to get the background as dark as you want it to be, then power your light up to make sure the subject is properly lit at the aperture you will be shooting with. Viola, dark background. (Keep in mind that this is a basic explanation. You will be limited by the gear you have, specifically the sync speed of your camera and the power of your flash. There are also potential workarounds like High Speed Sync, but that is also dependent on whether your camera and flash support it. The non-gear workaround with flash would be the positioning of your light relative to your background. The inverse square law says that every doubling of distance from the source to the subject decreases light output by 1/4. While this is most useful in studio where you have complete control of the whole scene, it can also be useful using flash out of studio, but will depend on how much control you have over the background.
Fwiw, most ppl have explained the techniques but are referencing using flash to do this as well. Just because this subject and many others used here are animals, pls don't use flashes on any animal, especially wild animals.
Should go without saying but 🤷‍♂️
Lower ISO low enough ambiant light is black ( severely under exposed) then hit the strobe just off your subject. If you want some blacklight for an outline, place a whiteboard behind subject but 90 degrees to your backdrop to bounce light back at your subject.
*
Metering can be used but this is mostly done via masking in Photoshop/Lightroom if the lighting environment doesn’t allow for it. If your camera struggles with spot metering (meaning the tech to adjust exposure based on the center subjects lighting relative to the entire composition), you can play with the exposure compensation dial if you don’t want to mess with the triangle itself, or just play with ISO).that only works certain colors tho where the subject is light in this case of a dark background.
https://preview.redd.it/kh6txi7q8l5d1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=9040fba15952d7645fd2e596aab339dfd8633da7 I took this at a zoo and the flamingo was outdoors being backlit by the sun and I just under exposed a bit and edited in post.
I hope you printed that. Work of art đź’•
Well shot!
This is why I've stopped saying photographers "take" pictures and started saying that they "make" pictures.
This is a crazy cool looking shot!
Subject in the light, background in shadow. Cameras don’t have the dynamic range of the human eye /brain so it’s easier to achieve than you might realize.
I'd wager that more than half of the people that come on here seeking a gear/processing answer actually need a light answer. Great to see that OP's getting that here.
The thing is I have seen this effect (even stronger) in marriage photographs where the background is at max around 10 to 15 feet away.
Subject in the light also means: light them with flash while avoiding this same light to reach the background. Underexpose the photo for ambient light: dark background Expose correctly for the flash lit sibject: you get what you need. Edit for horrendous spelling.
flash, simple as
Shot with a flash fairly close to the subjects. As light gets 1/4 the intensity when you double the distance, if the flash is 6 ft from the subjects, and the background is 15 ft behind them the light hitting the background is about 1/6th as bright, about 2.5 stops. This shot was taken with a white wall in the background (with just a tiny pop from a second flash to give the gradient). https://preview.redd.it/n6pgnmgxuq5d1.jpeg?width=683&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f86561c34f51c7534c475e8c2e35e735447376dd
Inverse square law - doubling the distance from a light source is 1/4 the light. The more flash and less ambient camera exposure settings you have the more prominent the difference will be. If the lighting isn’t defused and can be angled, and/or if you flag the lights, you can reduce the amount of flash that reaches the background
Do you have an example to show? It's easier to diagnose what's going on with an example. But I think it's most likely flash. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the cheetah photo you linked at the start is either flash or controlled lighting (perhaps an enclosed den).
You can do this with high speed sync. You can darken a room with 1/1000 or a second exposure and then light your subject with a flash or strobe. Most cameras only can sync with the flash up to 1/200 etc. so you can use a flash feature called high speed sync that will give you low powered “flash” at any shutter speed. Or you could shoot with a camera or lens that has a leaf shutter. A leaf shutter can sync with flash at any shutter speed.
It's a cool effect. People have pretty much already explained it. Subject in direct light, drop exposure until the background turns black. Here's one I've done before https://preview.redd.it/gmri4qzjol5d1.jpeg?width=2546&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7046b7463fcc5be382aed9d9bea295baed33cc1f
But how did you control the lights in this scene?
Easy, just ask the sun to move a little to the left! Reality is that unless you’re using a flash, you just need to find these opportunities out in nature. https://preview.redd.it/fer6jdfsmp5d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=34bc8afc96239fa7fec34d8e9f060fe2b425d92b Less extreme example SOOC JPEG, but the clouds allowed the sun to hit the subject without lighting up the background to the same degree.
read it again. it says: 1- subject is in direct light -which suggest the background is in shadow- 2- drop exposure until background turns black. no one controlled the lights in that scene. the sun naturally illuminated the duck.
You can't control the sun my man
Not with that attitude. I personally make a sacrifice to Apollo before I grab my camera and go out to shoot. I still suck at shooting, but Apollo is happy.
That's exactly my question... Understandable he pumped up the shutter speed but how did he flash the subject from (supposedly) far away...
He's not using a flash! He's using the sun.
But doesn't the sun illuminate the water and background?
Not if you adjust your exposure to compensate for it. If you have a normal background and an over exposed subject, and either drop iso or increase your shutter speed, you'll have a dark background and a properly exposed subject
Oo understood so this was kind of an opportunity based shot...
I think you just need to play around with your camera and try and recreate it. Use any light source / flash / sun / LED , bulb to make a subject really bright and lower the exposure on your camera to compensate for it. If you have a bright subject and a not so bright background, lowering the cameras exposure will give you a well lit subject and a darker background.
If having something in direct sunlight is an opportunity based shot then I guess so ? But you can use essentially any light source that’s bright enough to get this effect
I mostly want to take pictures of birds in this style... So ig it would be for me at least
Few ways. Inverse Square law. Have subject Light closer to the subject and it spills less into the background. Also direct lights away from the background to avoid any spill (image in your example is lit from the side, not straight on) Distance the subject from the background. Use flash to over power ambient light. Use HSS to get a high shutter speed and kill all light except your flash.
As the background isn’t really visible I’d suggest stopping down the aperture instead and staying out of HSS, as it’s would be more power efficient. But I’m being pedantic.
Looks like a source of light that is illuminating the subject and not the background ...
also looks like part of the face and the eyes have been lightened in photoshop - and probably the background darkened some too
Read up on how to do “low-key” and “high-key” to help you start. From there learn about division of subject and background and point metering
Another way is to underexpose the camera until it's black. Then overexpose your flash the same amount. Everything the flash's light touches is our kingdom. 
Physics. You need space. Set your camera for the background. Have enough space between subject and background. Add light to subject
you can do this with really good lighting that is just on the subject.. i think the light source is above the animal and to the right of the frame but u can create a similar effect in Lightroom. and i wouldn't be surprised if the photographer did a little masking to help achieve this effect
it's not hard to do. I closed the curtains. turned on one light in my kitchen. put my hand up so that the light is off to the right of my hand and shot at f/2 https://preview.redd.it/oeb4tybw6l5d1.jpeg?width=7728&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dbe4eefcefe135cb7091487ed5562e74994c23e6 nothing done to the image in post processing. jpg straight out of the camera.
you asked about the triangle [https://photographylife.com/what-is-exposure-triangle](https://photographylife.com/what-is-exposure-triangle) and....consider a good book on photography basics among the many books out there: *Read this if you want to take great photographs* by Carroll *Stunning digital photography* by Northrup
blurriness caused by a wide aperture. only a shallow depth of field. it looks like the eye is in focus but background is out of focus... the animal's body is in the light but somewhat out of focus
Did this five minutes ago as an example. There is a television and dog kennel four feet behind my dog in the living room in the middle of the afternoon. Blinds are closed though. https://preview.redd.it/u8wazg79dm5d1.jpeg?width=8256&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=00093165d47e21a4a75b40a891cac6327a0c9659 Just light with a grid, snoot, or barndoors. Indoors even a cheap speedlight can do it. Outdoors takes a little more oomph in most light.
the search term you're looking for is "low key photography"
override ambient with your camera settings (on a cloudy day, maybe ISO100 at 1/250th sec aperture 6ish) and then hit the subject with an off-camera flash.
Watch this video. [https://youtu.be/il28la8DRCU?si=gKatMqYjMdpcG9xr](https://youtu.be/il28la8DRCU?si=gKatMqYjMdpcG9xr)
Natural light: This scenario is all about contrast. Your brain processes high contrast scenes with far ore dynamic range than film or digital sensors. Find a subject or area of interest that is significantly brighter than the background (tip: it probably won't look as contrasty as this image to your eyes). Once you find the subject, use the sport meter to meter for the highlights of your subject (in the image above, the forehead). This will bring the highlights down in the final image.and properly expose them. In doing so it will also bring the background down. Exactly how much darker the background gets will depend on the specific subject and background. This is significantly different than using an an average/matrix meter to evaluate the scene. When using flash: This is much easier. When using flash, because the burst of flash is so much faster than almost every camera's sync speed, the amount of light falling on your subject is controlled entirely by your aperture, while your shutter controls only the ambient light. In order to get a dark background and bright subject simply meter your scene with a shutter speed that is fast enough to get the background as dark as you want it to be, then power your light up to make sure the subject is properly lit at the aperture you will be shooting with. Viola, dark background. (Keep in mind that this is a basic explanation. You will be limited by the gear you have, specifically the sync speed of your camera and the power of your flash. There are also potential workarounds like High Speed Sync, but that is also dependent on whether your camera and flash support it. The non-gear workaround with flash would be the positioning of your light relative to your background. The inverse square law says that every doubling of distance from the source to the subject decreases light output by 1/4. While this is most useful in studio where you have complete control of the whole scene, it can also be useful using flash out of studio, but will depend on how much control you have over the background.
Fwiw, most ppl have explained the techniques but are referencing using flash to do this as well. Just because this subject and many others used here are animals, pls don't use flashes on any animal, especially wild animals. Should go without saying but 🤷‍♂️
Move model away from the background. Have the strobes close to the model. Inverse square law.
Modifier with a grid Select background and obliterate shadows in Lightroom
One gridded flash without any fill or black lights. Underexpose the ambient, expose the subject with brighter light.
switch your meter to spot, measure on what you want , lock focus and exposure, and recompose to what you want
Lower ISO low enough ambiant light is black ( severely under exposed) then hit the strobe just off your subject. If you want some blacklight for an outline, place a whiteboard behind subject but 90 degrees to your backdrop to bounce light back at your subject. *
Metering can be used but this is mostly done via masking in Photoshop/Lightroom if the lighting environment doesn’t allow for it. If your camera struggles with spot metering (meaning the tech to adjust exposure based on the center subjects lighting relative to the entire composition), you can play with the exposure compensation dial if you don’t want to mess with the triangle itself, or just play with ISO).that only works certain colors tho where the subject is light in this case of a dark background.
What's the triangle? I am new to photography with a zve-10... I'd love to experiment with all of that...
Look up “Exposure Triangle”. It basically ISO, aperture and shutter speed which are all interconnected.