How do you get a pic in siluet?

Question

To come out like if it were a shadow and the background black in white. Like those picture of hands that spell out love. Does anyone know how to do that?

Answer 1

Light the subject from behind (called backlighting) and expose for the light area.

By the way, it's called silhouette.

Answer 2

You can do it with an SLR camera by changing the exposure, and using the correct lighting. Or you can do it with software like Adobe Photoshop.

An extreme Photoshop example would be to create an alpha mask.