I did one shoot with a model called Adele, who endulged some time with me on a Friday morning.
I did something different with this shoot which I want to talk about. Non-post processing high key shooting. Here, let me show you:
Would you believe me if I said this image was a straight RAW file conversion, with zero PP? Not even some RAW file tweeking was used here. You want to know how? Of course you do.
Ok, here is the straight stats:
iso 100
1/30
f2.2
You going to have to get that camera off its Auto feature for this one...
Now you might try this & say, whats going on here? Its not giving me high key. This is true. But what is high key? Its having high highlights, but without losing all image data in those highlights. You too often see badly mangled super-high contrasted images which are meant to be pass-offs for highkey. Unfortunately this isn't what we going for here...
The next thing we need to do is introduce a light source. This was done on a rather 'light' package. I used a strobist technique here. I wasn't going to cart all my lights up with me, so I just brought some speedlights instead. Putting them behind me, pointing upwards (NOT directed at the model) I had them flood the room (bounced off the roof & walls) with ambient light.
Here you can have some fun controlling your 'degree' of high key. Much like your normal studio heads, you can set the power setting on your strobist gear too. Playing around with 1/1 all the way down to 1/64 power settings, you can vary your degree of high key-ness. For the above image, I can't remember exactly what power setting I used, but it was a smallish room which didn't need much.
I hope that this little technique helps someone who has wanted to try high-key photography. And the beauty of this technique is that there is zero post processing. Just make sure you have a good makeup artist & you don't even need to touch up the models skin.
Here are a couple more using this technique.
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