Silhouetting

Examples of silhouetting in photography

For one particular shot there is a very bright background. I have toyed with balancing this shot to make it believably shot from a camera.

This is the initial comp

Due to the bright source of light behind the character, it would be likely when the camera's ISO was set up that everything else would become dark.

This is the current balanced comp

This is why I have darkened the character Tyler and toyed with contrast and gamma to make areas darker.

This is an example of it not done quite as well

However, it is very easy to over-do it and lose the attention to the character which is very important from a storytelling point of view, obviously...

Other notes on comp:

Light seen through skin

- I have use the light wrap effect and graded it to an orange and roto'd it around the areas of skin which is directly in front of the light source. This enhances the effect of light travelling through the skin. I found this an important detail to synchronise the chroma keyed foreground and CG background.

Autodesk Smoke

- I plan to add some lens flare to this shot. I have looked into Autodesk Smoke's ability to composite and edit lens flares in 3D/2.5D but I do not have enough computing power to make this viable at this moment, so I will opt for images sourced from the internet.

Lens flare (this can be set to 'Screen' in comp)