High key in low light?! This sounds oxymoron. High key is a lot of high light in the picture, how can you do it in low light?
We planned on a out door photo shooting for Sunday Oct 24. But the weather turned ugly on San Francisco and forced us to shoot in Studio 2 at Lines Dance Center. It was dark inside. I debated about using flash vs using available (low) light. Looking around the studio, the huge window facing market st provides such a beautiful background and a even backlight, making it very hard to resist.
The key in high key image is not so much about the amount of light rather than the quality of light. Yes it is a dark day, but the white interior of the studio provides a even illumination. Since the sky is much brighter, I knew if I put the model in front of the window, over expose the sky, I can get a nice high key lighting. Thanks to modern DSLR technology, ISO 1600 used to equal to highly grainy image in the film days, now it is very acceptable. So set the ISO to 1600, and throw the lens wide open (2.8) and off we go.
The window light is heavenly, and the models are just like angels. They turned out going really well together. Even in a sunny day, the light inside the studio is dark, so a common urge is to use flash fill. With a flash fill, you can get a much crisp image, and “correct” color. The problem though, is that the highly directional light from flash kills the heavenly mood from the window light. I used flash last time with Saki with this same backdrop to get a dramatic mood as well as matching the exposure to the interesting building outside. This time however, I want a beautiful dream kind of mood. So flashes stayed in camera bag.
There are several challenges for shooting high key image in low light. Mainly it’s hard to get faster enough shutter speed to stop the motion, overexposure of the background washes out the contrast making it difficult for lens to render clear sharp lines, and good skin tone is very difficult to achieve.
Like so many things in life, you have to look for the opposite to achieve a balance. In low key image, you look for strong light for drama, in high key images, you look for dark area and lines to define the image. Megan’s dark dress worked superbly in this lighting by providing an anchor to the images, so does Jackie’s hair color.
Photography is very much a discovery process as well expressive process. It is always a joy going into a session without much expectation and say things starts to grow.