Mar

45 Examples Of Shadow Photography

Note: this article appeared in Smashing Magazine in March of 2009.
By Daved Brosche and Smashing Editorial Team

Shadows can add a lot to a photograph. They can emphasize emotions, create surreal images, and be used in a variety of ways. While strong use of shadows in color photographs tends to be mostly used in silhouettes, it can also appear in a variety of other forms in color photos as well. In my opinion though, shadows are most powerful when used in black and white photographs.

Below we present a showcase of truly outstanding photos that make strong use of shadows in a variety of ways. All images are linked to the sources where they were found. Please feel free to explore further works of photographers showcased in this post.

Ricky Montalbano
Just a neat, artistic picture of a skateboarder and his shadow.

deadstar

Philippe Sainte-Laudy

Newbaro

Vic Nicholas

John Sloan

Vilhjálmur Ingi Vilhjálmsson

Lara Fairie
A stunning silhouette of a beautiful young lady. The light and shadows here create and excellent beauty shot.

Paul Bredow

Rosie Hardy
A very creative use of shadows to help portray a powerful feeling and emotion in this picture.

Massi Miliano
A combination of deep shadows, dark colors, creativity, and perfect time make for a very interesting and surreal photo.

David Herreman
“View from the top of ‘Levant Terril’ at Mons in Belgium. A ‘terril’ is a hill made from mining waste. There are still a lot of them in the old mining regions like Mons, now being appreciated as green areas. I’ve used a ND1000 filter in order to have an ‘evening effect’ even if the sun was high in the sky. This is NOT a tone-mapped HDR but a digital blending of 3 exposures. The main exposure was of 30 sec.”