High Key Lighting - Work Diary

Evaluation

Today in our photography lesson, we looked at High Key lighting and went to the studio to look at ways we can take images similar to those in our image bank. This wasn't a new technique that I hadn't looked at before, but the way in which we set the studio up and the lighting was new to me. Firstly, the lighting diagram above isn't completely accurate as we actually used two lights at the front in between the camera, they were both facing the subject which was positioned in the middle of the frame. Either side of them, we placed two white polystyrene walls which bounced the light back off of them and onto the model. This meant that there would be practically no shadows. One of the ways in which we got the background so bright was because behind the white walls, we placed two other lights at either side and used bright lights to make the background a solid white to decrease shadows. 

High Key - Image Bank

In the following images, we see images with extreme high key lighting. High key lighting is a style of lighting for photography that aims to reduce the lighting ratio present in the scene. High key lighting is perfect for the beauty style of photography as it suggests an upbeat mood, but also makes the images feel clean and crisp. As you can see from the images below, the background is completely white, with the face being highlighted through the use of bold colours and makeup. This allows us to draw attention to certain features of the face while also enhances them. For example, in the first image taken in the style of the photographer Rankin, the model is shown to be wearing bold colours on her face, she has a soft blue across her cheekbones which lift the face and make it seem narrower - while also wearing dark black makeup around the eyes which sculpts the face. It stops the image from being too washed out and also shows a defining line between the model and her background. In the next image, we also see makeup used in order to enhance feminine facial features and also to brighten up the image.