As a rule made to be broken, you don’t put your subject between you and the light source. I don’t think I was ever successful with a backlit subject using film. Digital automatic settings make it easy. Here are two of my most dramatic photos:

But the one below didn’t work, even though the conditions are nearly identical with the first one above:

One reason to avoid backlighting is to avoid flares and other artifacts, but even those can be artistic in limited amounts.