Low-key photography

You’ve probably guessed already that low-key light is the opposite of high-key light, the yin to its yang. High-key lighting focuses on light tones and whites; low-key lighting relies on shadows, deep blacks and darker tones, with very few whites and middle tones. The mood is opposite, too – while high-key lighting is hopeful and optimistic, low-key lighting is somber, mysterious and moody, dramatic or even ominous depending on the subject.
High-key images are flatter with less contrast than an image that qualifies as mid-key, which is most of the images that photographers produce. Low key images, on the other hand, tend to have a lot of contrast, with the primary impact coming from the shadows.

Studio lighting for low-key photography:

A low-key studio set up is a lot simpler than a high key one. You just need a single light source and a dark or black backdrop. You may find having a reflector on hand can be helpful, too, though in many cases all you will need is that single light source. As a general rule, keep the light off of your back drop and on your subject, but other than that you have a lot of freedom as far as where you choose to place your light source.

Examples of low-key photographs:

References:

1. Peterson, D. and Profile (no date) How lighting affects the mood of your photos. Available at: http://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/3558/using-lighting-style-to-create-mood-high-key-and-low-key-lighting/ .
2. Pinterest (no date) Available at: https://ro.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=low%20key&rs=remove&term_meta%5B%5D=low%7Ctyped&term_meta%5B%5D=key%7Ctyped&remove_refine=fashion%7Ctyped (Accessed: 2015).

High-key photography

High-key lighting simply refers to images that are mostly bright, with a range of light tones and whites and not very many blacks or mid-tones. In high-key photography, tones that generally would have been mid-range become much brighter, near-white tones become white and white becomes, well, white. This style of lighting was originally developed for films and television, back when the technology wasn’t very good at capturing high contrast ratios. Today high key is purely an artistic decision – photographers and filmmakers choose it when they want an image or story to be upbeat, optimistic or youthful.

A common misconception is that a high-key image does not need to have a true black. And while that is sometimes true, high-key images can and often do have very small amounts of black. These very small areas of black and middle tones will prevent the image from looking washed out. That small point of black – your model’s pupils, for example, or a shadow under her hair – can mean the difference between a high-key image and one that is just plain overexposed.

Studio lighting for high-key photography:

A basic studio lighting set up for high-key photography consists of a key light and a fill light, with your key light two times the brightness of the fill. The background should be lit independently–preferably with two lights positioned three to five feet away at 45-degree angles. These background lights should be at least one stop brighter than your subject lighting. This will result in the blown-out background that you’re looking for in a high-key image.

High-key images can also be obtained in the studio with a pastel-colored background, though white is more common and generally simpler to work with. As for your model, you can certainly achieve a high-key effect regardless of what she’s wearing, but you may find yourself more satisfied with your work if she’s dressed in lighter colors or in white.

Examples of high-key photographs:

References:

1. Peterson, D. and Profile (no date) How lighting affects the mood of your photos. Available at: http://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/3558/using-lighting-style-to-create-mood-high-key-and-low-key-lighting/ .
2. O_O (2007) Available at: http://www.deviantart.com/art/O-O-50612452 .
3. Pinterest (no date) Available at: https://ro.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=high%20key&rs=remove&term_meta%5B%5D=high%7Ctyped&term_meta%5B%5D=key%7Ctyped&remove_refine=wedding%7Ctyped (Accessed: 2015).

Technical session

Today was a really interesting day becaue we have learnt so much from Chris! It was one of the best technical sessions because I actually had the opportunity to take pictures and he showed us many lightning setups that we could use for our final photoshoot and not only.

Important things I have learnt today:

• to log in into the computer: username: student, password: student;
• we can borrow a mainspower flash kit and set up our own studio wherever we want - we just need to let Chris know in advance so he has time to sign our borrowing sheet;
• we can make our own background  - at home or even in the studio - we can paint one, for example;
• if the picture is too bright we can try to turn the flash down a bit;
• the best camera lenses for portrait and studio photography are: 50-55 mm, 85 mm and 100 mm
• we can use AV - aperture priority, especially when shooting outside, in the natural light etc.

I have also drawn a scheme of one of the lighting setups which I really liked:

Because I took a photo of Chris and he didn't posted on mycourse that photo, I don't have it so I can show how my picture looked, but I have the picture that he took of me:

Overall I really enjoyed today's technical session because I feel like it really helped me to understand better how to take good photographs and I hope this could be seen in my future results!

Creating a moodboard using magazines

Today in Sharon's seminar I had a lot of fun and I have learnt what a "moodboard" is. I didn't knew before and that's why I didn't even do my summer homework moodboard, but now I know and I can't wait to do more of these.

The task was to randomly pick a word from a dictinary and to be inspired by that word in order to create a moodboard according to what that work meant. My word was "odd" and I was really glad that this is the one I picked because I usually like odd stuff.

When doing a moodboard for a shooting/make-up session we have to consider the following:

• theme;
• think about the lighting;
• think about the styling;
• the model's pose;
• the model's facial expression;
• location;
• make-up and hair;
• key colour;
• background etc.

All these have to be indirectly explained through images by our moodboard. We can use text aswell but not tiny texts, big ones that can be seen.

I thought about a really lighten background and powerful light in general, wet hair and body, bright orange/red and green lips, messy hair and messy plum eye make-up, with sparkle all over the body. The model should look aggresive and strong. I thing that this can reflect, at least partially, the word "odd".

And here's how my moodboard turned up:

Practice session instead of London trip - Week 2

Today we should have had our second technical lesson with Chris but everyone went to the London trip, to the National Portrait Gallery, except I. I didn't go to London not because I didn't want to, but because I have some financial difficulties at the moment and I couldn't go.
But instead staying at home complaining about this, I decided to use my free time and book the one studio to practice setting it up and taking photographs with good light.
So I took my boyfriend as the model and assistant too and I went to the Uni with big extcitement.

We were really confused at first, when we got there, because we didn't know what to first, how to start. We have seen one of the teachers (I found later that his name is Peter) and asked him to help us and he was really kind and showed us some things about the computer etc. After this he went to teach a group of students health and safety rules and I gladly assisted too because I wanted to be sure that I hear the instructions again so I won't do something stupid.

After that I returned to the studio and started setting it up.
I used one type of lightning, the umbrella, because I was afraid that I will run out of the booking time and I won't have enough time to take pictures (and I was a bit afraid to try something else except what I have seen in Chris's first lesson because I didn't want to ruin expensive studio equipment). This turned up to be not such a great idea because I should have experimented more, but even less is better than nothing.
I set the camera as Christ told us (shutter speed 1/160, ISO 100, Manual mode), I've put the camera on the tripod and I've plugged the USB cable from the camera to the computer. I've attached the hot shoe adapter and the sync lead into it and started shooting.
I found that using a tripod when taking pictures was very restrictive and it wasn't a big difference in using the tripod or not,  and I don't think that I'm going to use it for the final shooting. Furthermore, it is really hard to move and I lost a lot of time trying to take a good picture with the camera on the tripod because I didn't know how to set it to have a good angle, and even if I knew, it is time consuming anyway, which I think is not good when doing a proper shoot because everyone wants to use their time effectively.
At first we used a white background and then we tried with a blue one, but I didn't like the blue one because it gave my pictures a cold feeling, I felt that there was too much blue tones in the picture.
I tried to take pictures with the reflector under and without it to see the difference and which effect I want and for a beauty shoot I'd definitely go for the reflector.
I had some problems after shooting too, because I didn't know that if I plug the camera into the computer the pictures won't be saved into the SD card but on the computer instead. I had to figure out how to save them into my SD card and how to delete them from the computer afterwards but in the end I succeeded.
Overall, I feel like this practice session could have been better, but consiering that it was the first time when I touched studio equipment and other camera rather than mine, I think that the result is pretty decent.

Me and my boyfriend both posed and we had lots of fun doing this! I think that he'll be my assistant in the final shooting.

Test without using the reflector.

Test using the reflector. This looks way better for a beauty shoot.

There is some of the equipment used for that shoot (and also extra things):