High Key Portraits

I do a LOT of high key portraits, especially for the beauty pageants.  The main reason is that it keeps the background clean and as long as the subject is not wearing white, it's easier to cut and paste.

One needs a white background, at least three lights (preferably four) and it helps to have a flash meter to be able to read the power coming out of the flash units.

 This is my basic High Key setup.  I have a main light that is boucing on the white wall behind me and raised almost to the ceiling.

The main light is off to the side closer to the subject.  There are two lights aimed at the wall (background) and a hair light to highlight the hair and also add another accent light.

The background lights are set to read two f-stops brighter than the main light which means I'm overexposing the background.   So if I'm shooting about f8, my background lights measure f16.

This is the shot of the studio.  The fill light is high aimed at the wall and centered, the main light is off to the side and my f-stop reading is f9.5 at ISO 100.  You see two background lights behind the Japanese screens.  They are set up that way to prevent any extraneous spill from those lights on the subject.  The hair light is high and to the left enough to kick some light on the hair.  The subject is at least 5' or more away from the background so there won't be any spill light.

Here's a sample shot taken in that setup.  The floor is darker to add some depth to the image.  I could also make it clean white by lighting the floor or going into Photoshop.

Head shot taken with the same setup.  The negative side of high key is that it accentuates any stray hair so that's another thing that one needs to be aware of.  Having to Photoshop that can be a pain.

Another reason that I shoot high key is that sometimes, things get in the photo (like this light).  With a simple plain background, it's a lot easier to clean that distraction out of the image.

Like this.

 Here's the situation.  I have a photoshoot, it's raining cats and dogs.  What does one do?

We were in upper Hilo and it started to rain.  This particular property had a huge shed used to store construction equipment and a really big door.  I used the light (overcast) coming in from the door as my main source of light.  It's nice and soft but as you can see, if the model wasn't blonde, the hair would have disappeared into the background.  What to do?

I set up a off camera flash (OCF) on a light stand triggered by a remote triggering device to add some depth into the photo.  As you can see, there's a forklift to camera left and a smashed ATV to camera right.  They added to the quirkiness of the photo.  There was some light coming in from the windows but not enough to do anything.  Flash unit was a Canon 550 EX set to manual and 1/128 power.  It added enough of a kick to add depth into the photo.  The image is framed to show the immenseness of the shed.

This is a closer shot of the same image.  Now with the hair light adding a kicker to the hair, the image has more depth.

1/80 sec f4.0, ISO 400