52 Week Project | High Key

The theme for this week’s challenge was high key. High key photography uses unnaturally bright lighting to blow out most or all harsh shadows in an image. High key methods were originally developed as a solution to screens that couldn’t properly display high contrast ratios, but has developed into more of a stylistic choice.

The easiest way to achieve a high key look is by utilizing a white backdrop of sorts. And low and behold, it snowed in Minnesota! Perfect! The nifty fifty (50mm f1.8) was the pick for lens as I wanted to overexpose the image to limit the amount of mid and dark shadows. Worked like a charm. Actually a little too well at first as the morning was very bright and the snow was very bright and f1.8 is very bright. Dropped my ISO to 250 and tamed the light just enough. Processed the images as black & whites in Lightroom and adjusted out the shadows on the ground.

Bender was the first subject. He’s interesting as high key because his white parts blend in with the background. His shape is implied at times.

Axle is always up for a jaunt in the snow, though he’s been a pouty-puss in front of the camera. Same settings as Bender, though since Axle is blackish the look is completely different.

Both of the images below could be considered high key, though the one on the right is more of a “true” high key. Same image, only difference is the shadow is adjusted out on the left image.

Next visit Linda of DogShotz Photography serving Indianapolis IN to see how she captured high key images!