Hi Fellow Photographers,

You passionate people who will discuss ratios, apertures, colors and contrast all day till the cows come home, this is Harshita from Avnida Photography. As someone who specializes in newborn, maternity and family photography, I wanted to contribute to the conversations around lighting.

Today, I’m writing a tutorial about setting up an effective way to do High-Key photography lighting (Oooohhh). Without breaking your bank (Aaaaahhhh = sigh of relief).

Before we get into the fun, let me share this. This may not come out right in the first few attempts. I experimented a lot of times and based on your feedback, feel like the look is much better now. Many of you who are close friends and peers asked me to share details, and that led to me writing this tutorial.

High-Key photography lighting is generally used for maternity sessions to get the perfect back light for your model. You want the mom-to-be to look hot and classy at the same time, which she absolutely deserves.

In other words, the goal is to create an effect of a light coming through a HUGE window behind your model. This creates a silhouette, and makes your model look beautiful.

There are two ways to create such an effect.

1) Traditional or standard three-point lighting, where you have two lights focused on the backdrop and one as a key light on the model. Possible, but it is tricky. Not to mention the fact that three lights and soft boxes could cost you between $700 – $1000, and then maintenance costs. Nope!

2) High-Key lighting the way I describe below. I either use Lastolite’s HiLite with a strobe light (Used elinchrome BX500Ri) , or a large soft box. As always, best to describe what I did with pictures, shown below. Some of the images are SOOC (straight out of the camera), and others are edited; I note the stage next to each image. I did this to show what you can expect at each stage. You can use any strobe light (Elinchrome/alien bees 400/800 or Einstein Strobe lights)

In the photos below, the models are general standing one to two feet in front of the soft box or HiLite. That said, you should try out different distances to get the desired effect for your models.

 My regular studio setup for high-key pictures with Lasolite’s Hilite and one soft box placed on the left.

A closer look at the Losolite’s HiLite softbox.

SOOC photograph.

Settings for the newborn session with high key lighting were 1/200 SS,  200 ISO, and 2.8 f

Final edited photograph.

For editing, i just corrected the White Balance and painted over the black panel of the Lastolite HiLite soft box. Also, I recovered some highlights over the baby’s body. I love using backlighting or high-key lighting for maternity sessions.

SOOC photograph.

Here, I used the regular rectangular soft box (with continuous lights) with white painted wooden panels. The settings were  1/250 SS, ISO 800, and 2.8f.

If you are a natural light photographer then you can also use huge windows to achieve this look. The settings have to be similar to the ones I used with continuous lighting setup.

Final edited photograph.

Another example of SOOC photograph with Elmo. Settings  1/160 SS, ISO 250, and  2.8 f
Daughter was not happy at all parting with her Elmo! 🙂
Final edited photograph.

Elmo’s like, “what’s going on?”SOOC photograph. Settings 1/250 SS, 800 ISO, and 2.0 f

Final edited photograph.

Large soft box gives the feeling of a large window with natural light streaming through 🙂

SOOC photograph.

Final Edited photograph.

Why High-Key Lighting looks perfect for Mom-to-be’s. She loved the contrast of all white with her red nails and maroon lipstick.

Another one 🙂

I hope this tutorial was helpful, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to comment to ask any questions you may have, and share how you were able to use high-key photography lighting for your sessions.

Speaking of sharing, submit photos showing how you used the high-key lighting effect, whether SOOC or edited, on my Facebook fan page. I’d love to see these photographs.

Perhaps our next blog is a collection of some of these Before/After photos, with a little excerpt from each one of you? 🙂

Let’s Hit The Right Note.

Harshita