In this video I show you how to shoot
high key portraits in a small home studio.
Hello, I'm Gavin Hoey and you're watching
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us photographers.
Once again, you join me
in my small home studio.
Today I'm going to do a portrait shoot
with a high key lighting.
Previously, I did low
key lighting, high key can mean
different things to different
photographers.
For me, a high key shot
is one where most of the tones are in
the brighter half of the histogram.
Although it's perfectly okay to have a
little bit of black in there too. Now,
that doesn't mean to say that you need
to overexpose your images, but you can.
It doesn't mean to say you have to
have a pure white background for high
key, but you can.
That's the great thing
about photography,
anything you want to
do, you can do it.
Now in order for this to work,
I need some lights. We need a
model and we'll get shooting.
So today
I've been joined in the studio by Jade
who's going to be the model for this
shoot and we've done a bit of
preparation here already. I've got a
white background because you need a
light or white colored background for a
high key look.
I've also got a light
right in behind Jade that's going to
illuminate the background.
Just one of the
Adorama StreakLights back there
and my key light is my Adorama
StreakLight 360 which is going to
illuminate Jade.
This has already
been metered for f8.
Let's take a picture
and see if this is high key.
So I'll get my camera...
As we can see we've got a nice,
pure white background.
We've got great illumination
on Jade but for me that's not high key.
There's just too much shadow on the
shady side of Jade's face.
So to add some
light into the shady side we could put a
second flash in here, or technically a
third flash, or I could just use a
reflector. With reflectors, well it's one
of those things that every photographer
should have in their studio.
I'm just going to pop a reflector in.
Now, you've got to remember that
light bounces in straight lines.
So the light from my key
light will hit the reflector, bounce in
and fill in the shadows on Jade's face.
I'm going to use the silver side of the
reflector rather than the white side
because high key works really
well with low contrast. So the more light
I can bounce in, the better.
Let's take the same shot.
As you can see,
this time we've got quite a lot more
fill into the shadow side of the face.
There's still some shadow in there, it's
not completely flat.
However, for me it's
still not quite high key and the thing I
want to change to make it a little bit
more high key is what Jade is wearing. So
she's got a dark colored jacket on which
really doesn't quite lend itself to the
high key look and feel. So let's get that
changed into something else and take
some more shots.
So as you can see, we've
changed Jade. She's brought this
amazing feathered top which is a lovely
light color and will work perfectly with
the high key look and feel. Now, there will
be a bit of photoshop work to do on
these pictures and we'll get to that
later in this video.
It's also worth
saying, if you want to know how I light
this white background so it actually
goes white remember to check out the
Adorama Learning Center where you'll
find out loads of information on how to
make your white background truly white.
OK, let's take some pictures like that
and see how this looks different.
So this time we've changed things slightly.
We've changed Jade's outfit again. Now she's
wearing something that's definitely
white and if you're going to go for a
high key look, having your model actually
wear white, well that really helps to
make the whole high key thing come
together.
I've also moved the background
light. So where before we were lighting
directly onto the background to blow it
out to white, now it's off to the side
and bouncing off my low ceiling to give
me a nice gentle fill on the background.
Which, you can see, has completely changed.
Now it is a background that we've made
out of sheets of printer paper and just
stuck onto the wall.
Your backgrounds don't have to be
expensive and for high key shots
they don't have to be
pure white. You can have texture in
there still.
So let's put this into practice
and see how this works.
Jade are you ready?
Let's take some shots.
Back in a previous episode of AdoramaTV,
I talked about props being one of the key
things for a small studio space like mine.
One of my favorite props was
sunglasses.
Go check out the Adorama
Learning Center if you want to find out
some more of my favorite props.
But if you're going to use props
with high key, you want
the props to be part of the high key look
and feel.
Hence Jade's wearing white sunglasses.
Let's take some shots like that.
Well that was a great fun.
We got some fantastic
high key images there but they're
not complete without a little bit of
work in Photoshop.
So let's jump into
Photoshop and do some editing and
we'll do that right now.
For my high key portrait,
I wanted to do a couple of things.
First of all, I wanted to take the
saturation of the skin tones down and
then give everything a nice bright glow.
I'm going to do those two things using
layers.
So let's get an image and have a look.
First of all, I need to make a
copy of the existing layer, the
background layer here.
I do that by going up to
Layer on the menu and then
choosing Duplicate Layer.
You can give it a name if you like
but I'm just going to
click OK.
Then I want to take away the
color from this.
So to remove the color,
Image Adjustments and then way down the
bottom, Desaturate.
So that takes it to black and white
but it's not quite high key.
The high key bit comes along when I
change the blending mode from
Normal to Screen.
Screen blending mode is
always going to make your image lighter.
By having a black and white and a
color version, I reduce the saturation of
the color along the way.
I also lose a bit of contrast but
we'll deal with that in a second.
Now, I think that's just a
little bit too strong so I'll reduce the
opacity of this down until I find
something that I'm kind of happy with.
That's likely to be in the mid-60s,
something like that.
OK, what about that contrast reduction?
Well for that I'm
going to add contrast back in by making
another duplicated layer.
Duplicate Layer, click OK.
Now, that will duplicate
the blending mode as well.
So currently it is the screen blending mode.
I'm going to come down and change it
to Soft Light.
Soft Light will add some contrast
into the scene.
Again, I might want to adjust the
opacity for how much contrast I want.
I reckoned it was probably about
right where it was.
But it just adds
a hint more to the blacks.
Remember, it's perfectly okay to
still have some black,
even in your high key shots.
One area where I've got to do a bit more
work is something that I, kind of, added
to my own workload.
That's the sunglasses because
sunglasses, well you
always get reflections. I'm going to
show you how to remove the
reflections really quick and simply by
using, again, a couple of layers.
So first thing to do is,
select the lens part
of the sunglasses.
So I'm going to get my
quick selection tool.
I'll just click in here and in here.
I think it probably
needs a little bit of softening of the
edge of my selection.
So to do that, I'm
going to use Select and Mask because I'm
in Photoshop CC, that would be Refine
Edge on older versions, and I'm just
going to add some Smoothing and a bit of
Feathering. Just so I soften the edges of
the selection, click OK.
The next thing is a nice little keyboard
shortcut,
Ctrl+J on a PC, Cmd+J on a Mac
will jump that selection to its own layer.
In order to make the sunglasses darker, I
need to change the layer Blending mode.
Which is currently set to Soft Light and
I'm going to go down for Multiply.
We need a couple more of those
sunglasses so I'm going to press Ctrl+J,
Cmd+J again and as I do, you can see
that the sunglasses get darker and
darker. Now at this point they are just
black blobs. So to bring a little bit of
the real world back, I'll swap back to
the Normal blending mode and then I'm
going to pop my Opacity back to 100%.
Which, as you might imagine,
kind of takes me
right back where I started but here's
the trick, come down to the Layer Mask
button. I'll add a Layer Mask and I'll
get a paintbrush and I'll make sure my
paintbrush color is set to black and
then I can just mask off those little
bits there.
You could use the eraser tool as well,
but the mask just gives me that
little bit more control.
All that does is, it just adds a little bit of the
real world back into the edges of the
lenses and that just makes the whole
thing a little bit more 3D and a little
less painted black.
There you go,
there's my high key image completed.
It's amazing how adding a few simple props
makes all the difference to your high
key shots and so much easier to do when
everything is white.
Now, of course, if you
want to see more videos from myself and
the other amazing presenters right here
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me a comment below.
I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks for
watching.