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?

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.

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.

Background bokeh straight out of camera

The above picture isn't necessarily a composite. You can achieve a similar effect straight out of camera.

Here's a picture I took almost 10 years ago:

And here's the setup:

• SB600+gridspot, back camera right, 1/16, 85mm


• SB25+Plusgreen gel, camera left, 1/64, 24mm.


• One chair as a big gobo to prevent light from spilling to the background.


• One folded piece of paper, front camera right, to reflect the light from SB25 and soften the dark transition between the 2 lit parts of the cup.


• Christmas garland on the background to get the bokeh bubbles.


• Both flashes triggered by Cactus V4


• D90 + 80-200 f/2.8


• 80mm, f/2.8, 1/200s, ISO 200´

Silhouette

By removing the flash at front camera left and the sheet of paper, you would get the silhouette via rim lighting.

Foreground bokeh straight out of camera

In order to have the bokeh bubbles in front of the couple, you could shoot through the light garland instead of having it in the background. You'll have to hand hold it with your left hand, have an assistant hold it or hang it somewhere.

Here are two examples of foreground bokeh from picturecorrect.com and petapixel.com:

You might want to search for "rim light" or "back light" techniques. Couldn't quickly find an existing question that looked close enough to match that particular usage. But that's basically a (low powered?) flash hidden behind the couple and pointed toward the camera to light just the edges of their profiles. Looks like it might be gelled to give the blue tint, also.