High Key is a picture on a white background. Not just one that looks white but one that is completely absent of any percentage of color what-so-ever. It's not a simple thing to achieve with photography alone. It can be faked with a photo editing program but I'm going to tell you how you can do it with little to no editing.
The background....
The best way to do it is to buy a large white roll of paper made for photography backgrounds, but they are expensive so you can get away with a very large white piece of canvas or a very thick king size sheet if the child your photographing is small or you can build your own high key white background out of wood creating a wall and floor if your good with a saw and hammer. What ever you use needs to be seamless and flat with no wrinkles. If you choose to use cloth you will still need something solid for the model to stand on because no matter how hard you try you will end up with cloth wrinkles under foot of the model. You can go to lowes and get a large piece of white board in the same section with the paneling that works great for a floor. It has a nice shine to it as well so it can be wiped clean incase of accidents.
The lights......
There are cheap ways to rig up make shift lighting but unless you want to do allot of photo editing afterwards you really can't skimp on lighting to get the effect your looking for. You can get some fairly inexpensive professional photography lighting on ebay. There are lots of different brands. If you choose Tungstan you have to realize that it casts a warm yellowish light so you will have to set your cameras white balance to Tungstan to make up for that color tone. I personally like fluorescent lights because they throw off a nice white light and they don't get hot to annoy my models and they save on energy. You will need at lease 4 different lights to set this up properly although one more wouldn't hurt.
You can find a great set on ebay at the following link.
http://cgi.ebay.com/PHOTO-4200-WATT-DIGITAL-PRO-COOL-FLO-SOFTBOX-BOOM_W0QQitemZ200133089107QQihZ010QQcategoryZ3860QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262
If you are photographing in your house you need to check your fuse box to make sure it can handle all these extra watts without blowing a fuse. Otherwise your going to be getting flustered trying to snap shots in between the lights going out.
Important, Don't mix and match lights. for example don't use a tungstan light and a fluorescent light in the same shoot. No matter how you set your white balance on your camera it will not come out white.
Setting up the lights......
Have your model stand about 5 feet from the background and put 2/3 lights behind her pointing at the background. One on the left side aimed at the right side of the background and one on the right side aimed at the left side of the background. Another boom light over top aimed at the middle of the backdrop would not hurt either. Remember you want the background to be completely blown out with light. Now light your model with the other 2 lights. One on her right and one on her left. Distance them from her enough so that she is not too bright. Especially if she is wearing something white. You want her to be darker to stand out from the background but not so dark that she doesn't look good.
Finally once you take the pictures open them up in a photo editing program and read the color percentages all over the background mainly around the edges. If it does not read all 0% you will have to color correct it to be right, otherwise when its posted to the web you will be able to see the break between picture and background on the internet.
Here's an example of High Key Photography!!
Have fun taking pictures and remember. practice makes perfect!
Angela Owens
Owens Photography
No comments:
Post a Comment