reverse engineering - How to reproduce a photo with silhouette and bokeh?

I recently found a photo with a silhouette and bokeh at DSLR vs Mirrorless: Wedding Photographer's review. The subjects are as dark as the background, there is only a rim light shaping their heads. I know that the yellow circles are small, out-of-focus light bulbs. I am interested in how the silhouette is made and how the it was setup with the light bulbs. Could it be a composite?

Answer

There are two ways to go about accomplishing this - in camera and in post.

Both techniques will rely on shooting a rim-lit subject.

Put a flash behind the subject. In my image, I actually had the flash cranked up WAY too much, so I'm getting additional light acting as fill (bouncing off the couch and back toward the front of the subject):

Set-up below shot is below. Flash is a 430EX set to 105mm, full power, with 3 MagMod grids attached. They limit the light to 15 degree beam. I'm shooting directly opposite the flash, putting Yoshi right between me and the flash.

And the resultant image:

Technique 1: post pro add in

Now, some rough clean up work to darken everything around my couple:

And finally, topping with some stock bokeh shot. Bokeh meshed using Add method and slightly less opacity. Bokeh used from https://www.pexels.com/photo/time-lapse-photo-of-lights-220118/ under CC license.

Assuming you take the time to do this right, I'm sure you could do a lot better. But, to recap:

• Have a point light source firing from behind, this is called a rim light



• Darken any areas that you want gone in post


• Add a stock bokeh shot on top, whether yours or purchased. (Creating your own stock bokeh photos is simple and fun. All you really need are some Christmas lights. Here's a good how-to)

Technique 2: in camera

And here's the shot redone holding this string light in front of the lens. It's a bit bright where I am right now and I didn't darken out the BG. Please excuse that for this example...

Photo of the lights:

Photo of the shot:

Having a big handful of Christmas lights would be better than this simple string. Also, it's terribly hard to use string lights when a cat is in the room.

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To restate: These are two very different techniques to accomplishing the same thing. Many photographers are in-camera purists and will despise the above technique. If you have the time, by all means, go for in-camera. If you are shooting this on location with a non-model couple, then I would advise getting a shot without the foreground bokeh...just in case you need it later, because, now you know, you can do this technique in post quite easily.