Silhouette wedding portraits are so beautiful. At least in our opinion! They’re just so striking. So artistic and aesthetically pleasing. That’s why we try to create at least one silhouette picture of you on your wedding day. No matter what time of day it is or where your wedding takes place, we’ll find a way to fashion one of these gorgeous images for you. Outside in the bright sun in the middle of the afternoon? We’ll pose you with the sun behind you. In a dark indoor space like the Richmond theater where we made this portrait? We’ll set up some lights that will create the sharp outlines that make a silhouette photo really pop. Because when we’re taking your wedding portraits, we want you to have something artistic to hang on your walls. And a creative silhouette image will give you just that.
How can we say that with such certainty? What is it about silhouette images that makes them such works of art? There are a few reasons why we think they stand out so much:
Perhaps you noticed a theme in what we said above. Bright lights are an integral part of silhouette wedding portraits. To create those images, we need to (obviously) cloak your faces in shadow. That means amping up the darkness. But we also need you to be visible in the picture. So we have to add those lights – be they the sun or our flashes. And that brings a really striking contrast into the photos that makes them visually arresting.
We’ve mentioned elsewhere how much we love colorful wedding photography. And silhouette images do an awesome job of bringing out the vibrancy of the colors in the surroundings. Again, having to darken the background is the key. To give you an example, if we take a non-silhouette portrait of you outdoors in the bright sun, the sky will end up a shapeless white mass. Or if the sky is a deep blue, you’ll be almost obscured by the darkness. But if we use the sun to silhouette you? There will be a crisp outline of you against the bluest sky imaginable.
The last thing that makes silhouettes so compelling is a bit of an X factor. Seeing the faces of the couple is important in every photo with some sort of emotional content. But in a more artistic picture, obscuring them can have a very powerful effect. Just as the expressions on visible faces draw us in, the lack of them on hidden ones attracts us with their absence. You find yourself wondering, even if only on a subconscious level, who the people are.
You can see all three of those elements in the image featured here. Thanks to the lights we set up behind the couple and the heavy darkness in the space, there is a strong contrast. Underexposing the picture made the red of the curtains deep and rich. And the mysteriousness of the newlyweds draws your eyes right to them. (We also asked the bride to turn on her colorful, illuminated special wedding barrette. That added even more color to the image, in addition to another irresistible detail.)
As we mentioned above, we created this gorgeous, aesthetically pleasing wedding portrait at a theater in Richmond VA. More specifically, the Carpenter Theatre in Dominion Energy Center. We talk about its virtues here, but we did want to highlight one specific element that makes it an awesome location for a wedding. Not surprisingly, it’s the stage you see in this silhouette image.
Raised stages are one of the best features of theater wedding venues. They bring a new dimension to the photos of almost every part of your day. If you exchange your vows up on a stage, the height creates exceptionally dramatic angles. (In addition to it making you quite literally the star of the show!) Stages also often have curtains with rich colors, which add a splash of excitement to all the pictures.
As you can see here, that was the case at the Carpenter Theatre. The red curtain made every image more interesting. It certainly made this silhouette image more lively!
Interested in learning more about our services? Please visit our Wedding Photography FAQ page for answers to all your questions! Ready to inquire about our availability on your wedding date? Contact us now to get the conversation started!
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