The silhouette manages to squeeze emotion and character into a figure without light. It’s a paradox in a technique, to extract nuance to that without detail. And for this week’s Shooting Challenge , you have to capture a silhouette.

The Challenge

Take a photo that incorporates a silhouette of somebody, animal or object. We just ask that you simply go all-out on committing to silhouettes and remove all discernible detail from the subject. In other words, whatever figure you capture have to be in pure, lightless black. Oh, and no using Photoshop beyond basic brightness/contract/exposure tweaking.

The Method

The basic principle behind the silhouette is to have a foreground subject that’s darker than the background. The volume of light from the background will dictate the terms of your photo.

Digital Photography School recommends a couple of excellent tips, but those of you who prefer auto metering modes can use my favorite: Press your shutter button halfway all the way down to set the exposure for the brightest component of your image, then shift your frame to include the subject. Then take the shot.

Picture Correct suggests using a narrow aperture (meaning a high f-stop) to increase your depth of field, putting more of your shot in focus. On the other hand, a blurry silhouette or murky background could both be interesting tools inside the right shot. Just take our lead photo by flickr member Kyle May -the out of focus background implies a larger scope to the photo’s context, like a likely battlefield.

The Rules – READ THESE

1. Submissions have to be your individual.
2. Photos have to be taken the week of the contest.
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings, technique and story behind shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com, not me.
5. Include 800px wide image (200KB or less) AND a 2560×1600 sized in email. (The 800px image is the single judged, so be at liberty to crop/alter the larger image for wallpaper-sized dimensions.)
6. One submission per person.
7. Use the appropriate SUBJECT line for your email (more info on that below)

Send your best photo by Monday, October 4th at 8AM Eastern to contests@gizmodo.com with ” Silhouette” inside the subject line. Save your files as JPGs, and use a FirstnameLastnameSilhouette.jpg (800px wide) and FirstnameLastnameSilhouetteWallpaper.jpg (2560px wide) naming conventions. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) within the body of the email in conjunction with a story of the shot in several sentences. And don’t skip this story part because it’s often essentially the mostsome of the most enjoyable part for us all beyond the shot itself!

If you’re keen on Shooting Challenges, you may as well like my new day-in-the-life site: Life, Panoramic. Today, we’re featuring photos from across India .

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This post is tagged: basic principle, battlefield, depth of field, digital photography school, interesting tools, photo digital, shutter button