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How to Use Silhouettes to Make an Impactful Photograph

It’s all about the light you cannot see

Mark Ali
Counter Arts
4 min readSep 14, 2023

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A silhouetted woman looks out a window at a vineyard at a Napa winery.
“Overlooking the Vineyards” (© Mark Ali)

When people talk about listening to jazz music, you might hear them say: “…it’s all about the notes they’re NOT playing”.

Yeah, I don’t know what that means either. Jazz people are odd.

But it’s an interesting notion — that is, appreciating what’s not there. What’s omitted.

Naturally, like so many things, I can apply this notion to photography.

Really? How?

Photography is all about light. It’s a light-based medium.

With photography, a lack of light is like “the notes they’re not playing”. It leaves something to the viewer’s imagination.

You can’t overdo it, of course. Nobody wants to look at an image that’s black from edge to edge. That’s definitely a little too artsy for me.

But when carefully used, the lack of light can be very impactful. In my opinion, that comes into play most successfully with silhouettes.

Silhouettes lack detail, and yet they clearly identify something, or someone.

They lack substance, but they’re a substantial part of every image they appear in.

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Counter Arts
Counter Arts

Published in Counter Arts

The (Counter)Cultural One-Stop for Nonfiction on Medium… incorporating categories for: ‘Art’, ‘Culture’, ‘Equality’, ‘Photography’, ‘Film’, ‘Mental Health’, ‘Music’ and ‘Literature’.

Mark Ali
Mark Ali

Written by Mark Ali

I’m a writer, a photographer, a music lover, and a professional ice sculptor. I’m kidding about that last thing. (View my portfolio at: markaliphotos.com)

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