In this Photo Tip I will go through the creation process of photographing a sunset silhouette before the sun has set.

Have you ever been on the wrong side of the light with an animal in the perfect position to produce a silhouetted image but the colour of the sky is still blue and not the beautiful gold of a sunset as seen above?

Well what if I told you that the above image was taken in broad daylight, a couple of hours before sunset? You'd say I was fibbing, wouldn't you? Well I’m not - because all I did was make use of my knowledge of white balance to produce the sunset effect of this silhouette.

When I say this, I am talking about making use of the custom white balance function on your camera. This is found in the setting menu on many models and more often than not under your white balance menu when pressing the white balance menu button denoted by the two letters WB. See below for a visual breakdown of the different colour temperatures.

To achieve this beautiful golden colour all you need to do is compose your image with the light source from diagonally behind your subject so as to be on the shaded side and then underexpose it until a silhouette forms. The colour comes in from a simple manipulation of driving the white balance colour temperature up to 10000K in the menu and voila! A simulated sunset silhouette.

Don’t just look through the view finder, look around...