Now this is one of my favourite types of photography but is a mini-rule breaker.

Standard convention is never to shoot into the light, it confuses the camera exposure and can cause some lens flare etc in the image.

Now the thing is... I quite like doing both :))

Contre-Jour comes from the French for "into the day" and is a style of photography where a light source, either the sun or an artificial light is directly in the shot, often as the focal point.

It's fair to say this probably no longer comes under the heading of a rule breaker, as it's a well known and well used style now.

Oh, and I'd better get the health warning out of the way... be VERY careful looking towards the sun through your lens, it is a magnifying device after all and can damage your eyes. I used to be very bad at this, now I tend to be a lot more careful.

Here's a few of my own efforts:

Holding up the Sun

The light at the end of the tunnelStatueSea marker

Plymouth Hoe

As you can see, the biggest unwanted effect can be lens flare, the one middle-left has a very obvious yellow/green circle. This happens when light scatters and bounces in unwanted ways in one of the lens elements/inside the lens.

Some lenses/cameras are better than others when it comes to controlling flare.

A lot of photographers use digital editing software to clone these unwanted blemishes out, I do if I can but often leave them in if either the image would suffer or if, in some cases, I think it helps.

Often when doing this type of photo I'm actually wanting to emphasise the light but it's really personal choice, If no lens flare is possible, then great, but be prepared for it sneaking in.

The other thing about contre-jour is to expect minimal details in the shadows.

Because the light is pushing the exposure well down anything dark, any shadows, will be either mostly, or totally burnt out.

The problem is to dive too far the other way and get detail in the shadows will then cause the light to burn out... it's a balancing act.

I admit to being a fan of silhouettes, I even burn the shadows more in digital editing software sometimes purely to get that sharp black deliniation of anything caught in the light.

There are two options if you want a good exposure for both highlights and shadows, one is to take multiple shots at different and merge them together in a digital editing program like Photoshop.

The other, more hardware based is to use what's known as a ND Grad filter, these are glass or plastic that's been dyed black at the top but slowly graduates into clear, you line up the graduation with the horizon and this allows the camera to balance the exposure by darkening the sky while leaving the ground as it is.

The first method is often better at bringing out all the different shades but can look fake, the second looks much more natural but doesn't change the exposure as much.

The really good thing though about Contre-Jour is you get great clarity in most of the silhouettes because the camera aperture/f-number will go very low because of all the light it's getting, leads to brilliant depth of field!

Personally I think it's a great effect if you get it right and don't overuse it, just make sure you expect to lose detail one way or t'other.