High Key Lighting

High Key Lighting 

Definition - High-key lighting is a style of lighting for film, television, or photography that aims to reduce the lighting ratio present in the scene. 

Image Bank 

How to shoot High Key Lighting 

      The image above shows the set-up in the studio that is needed to take a high-key lighting photograph. There are two lights that are behind the subject which are directed at the background. There is then one that is on the subject, both of these lights will be at different strengths, this is due to the lighting ratio 2:1. The lights at the back will need to be double the brightness of the front in order for the background to appear white in the photograph. The front light will be half the power so to expose the subject but keep them separate from the background. 

My Images 

      The images above were my attempt to show different high key lightning's. All of the images were taken under the camera settings of F8, 1/125secs and ISO200, however each time I changed the back lighting to get a different effect. The very first photograph was taken when the back lights were on 1/8 giving the backdrop an aperture of F11. This was the brightest that the images would be due to the background being blank white therefore extremely high key. However I do think that this brightness gave the photograph a hazy and washed out effect on the subject. The second photo was taken with the back lights on 1/16 giving an aperture of F8, this was the middle of my experimented pictures. The only slight change was the shadow that appeared on the right side of the white background, showing that there is in fact a background not just blank space. Lastly there is the photo that was taken at 1/32 on the back lights, with an F stop of 5.6, this made the background look almost grey as it wasn't strong enough to over expose it. 

My Set-up