 Beverley A. Daniels |
How to Shoot High-Key Portraits I have done a lot of work in black and white with a black background, but now I have a 9ft roll of white paper for my studio and I am trying to get those high key shots where the white is bright. I am getting close but I still find my background on the creamy side. I have two tungsten umbrella lights and I am looking for suggestions on positioning and wondering if I need to light the background as well.
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Bob Cammarata |
Set your exposure to overexpose the white background by 1 1/2 to 2 stops. This will render much whiter whites. (If you need to, you can add more light to the background to accomplish this.)
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William Koplitz |
"High Key" and "Low Key" refers to the position of the Key, or main, light. In high key the light is higher and the lighting is fuller, like a summer day. In low key the scene has more shadow and mystery because the key light is low. In the old films, where the descriptions came from, they used scrims and arc lights to create a high key scene, think Busby Berkley. If you used foil unbrellas, inside of a soft white, it might work. Usually, in a high key scene, the background would have the same lighting as the subject.
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Gena A. Tussey |
I do quite a bit on High Key white...I use a fill light of F5.6, a main of F11 (or F16 if I am going for the Hollywood model look) along with a reflector. Then I use 2 pan lights with blinders metered at F 16.5 on each side of paper with a F16 dead center on the paper...I get really good results in color but I LOVE IT in b/w...hope this helps.
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