Photography books feature back lighting as a way to create silhouettes. That’s true, and a good use, but I think less important than other uses: getting bright-against-dark contrast and getting translucent “stained glass window” effects. The Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden near Hilo has such an endless delightful subject matter, there are opportunities to try out many photo techniques, including back lighting.

Here is an example that includes elements of silhouetting and translucency:

This photo makes use of the “stained glass effect”:

Both of these photos are straight point-and-shoot images taken with a pocket camera. I cropped the second image to get rid of a dark area near the bottom of the image, but I didn’t adjust the lighting in Photoshop.

The trick, insofar as there is a trick, is to not to be afraid of shooting into the light. Take the shot and don’t worry.

While we are in the botanical garden I’ll mention a few relevant tips. Tree-filled botanical gardens and other deep forests are locations that photograph well in the middle of the day. Most scenics are better with morning or afternoon sun, where the angled lighting emphasizes the shapes of objects. In deep vegetation there are always plenty of shadows, and the greater problem is getting light on the subject.

Quickshotartist usually eschews the burden of carrying around a tripod, but if there is ever an exception, dark forests may be it. It real is dark. Taking closeups of flowers is likely to involve exposures of 1/15 of a second or longer. That’s too long to hold the camera steady reliably. The backlit subjects are an exception; the work without much effort.

Another tip is that the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden is worth a trip from anywhere to visit. Although there are flowers and dramatic tropical views all year round, there are more flowers in late summer and early fall.