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High Key vs Low Key Lighting: What’s the Difference?

Chris Gampat
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04/27/2015
04/27/2015
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Last Updated on 04/27/2015 by Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Profoto B2 First impressions review portraits with Lauren (3 of 8)ISO 1001-160 sec at f - 2.8
Low Key Lighting, notice the shadows

What is High Key and Low Key lighting? The folks over at Adorama TV try to explain it to you in under three minutes. Dan in the video after the jump explains that high key lighting is when your lighting is very low contrast with almost no visible shadows. This is done often in portraiture and is very forgiving.

In comparison, low key lighting has very high contrast. It can make a subject really pop in a scene.

Dan’s video is after the jump, but we’ve added extra examples of High Key and Low key lighting after the jump.

High Key Lighting

Very high key lighting, notice an almost total lack of shadows.
Very high key lighting, notice an almost total lack of shadows. To do this, we shot Amanda with a flash in High Speed sync mod and filled the shadows in with direct flash
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Phottix Indra500TTL Images portraits with Erica (1 of 4)ISO 2001-180 sec at f - 1.4
Erica was shot with flash diffused through a giant Umbrella and also added fill from the natural light of the window and the flash bouncing off the panels. The wrap about light helps to eliminate much of the shadow but not all of it.
Model: Bec Fordyce
Model: Bec Fordyce
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Sony A99 images with 135mm f1.8 (4 of 8)ISO 400
By backlighting a subject and overexposing for the shadows, you can also create very high key lighting

 

 

Low Key Lighting

Because of the strong contrast in this photo, you can consider it low key
Because of the strong contrast in this photo, you can consider it low key
ISO 400, 1/100th f2.8
Low key lighting. While the light still look flattering, there is a strong contrast to bring out specific details in the image
The shadow and fact that this image was lit on only one side makes this very low key
The shadow and fact that this image was lit on only one side makes this very low key

 

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adorama contrast dan examples high key High Key vs Low Key Lighting lighting low key shadows
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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