London silhouette panoramic prints for offices.
At the beginning and the end of the day when the sun is low in the sky in a city landscape silhouettes are everywhere. If you pointed an iPhone at the image below it would’t allow you to underexpose the subject and over expose the sky. If you used the automatic setting on a camera the same would happen as the metering system on auto would take a reading from the large expanse of very bright sky. You’re also looking directly at the sun. The camera is fooled into thinking that the scene is brighter than it actually is so you need to take control and take the image on manual. There are two ways of making a striking silhouette. The first way is to zoom in and take a reading from the brightest part of the image and lock the exposure. Then re-compose the frame and the dark areas will be darker. The second way the is to take an overall meter reading from the camera, make a note of it and switch to manual. Then plan on taking three exposures, one by overexposing 4 stops, the second at 3 stops and a third overexposing by 2 stops. On a digital camera you’ll be able to see your results on the camera but those of us who use film we have to wait until the film is developed.
This technique is called ‘bracketing’ and for us film types we have to take a number of exposures to get the right exposure. It’s still a good idea to use a tripod as the resulting increase in exposure time value can make a hand held shot blurry. Your film choice is also important. The print above started life on 400ISO ILford Bkack and white film. This film allows large smooth prints so I am able to print as large as 52” and still get very little grain in the print. All of the prints on this website started life on film, there are no digital images. We also do our own printing which makes a huge difference as the treatment of the blacks in a silhouette is important. You can see this London Westminster here.
Colour silhouette prints are also striking. The print above was taken from the top of the OXO tower in central London as a storm was rolling in. I wanted a very grainy print so I chose a very fast 1000ISO film for the job. I love the way the clouds and sky are quite grainy and the skyline is plunged into a silhouette. I have also made a black and white panoramic version of this print which you can see here.
Below is a print of Battersea Power Station. It makes such a lovely skyline print. I wanted the sun burn into the sky section of the image and have the building underexposed and the rest I did during the printing stage and I was able to get bright whites as well as absolute blacks. You can see this framed print here in the London Black and white gallery.
