Lighting Low Key Studio Portraits

You dont need to use artificial lighting to get a low key portrait.

Lighting low key studio portraits. Instead you could light your subject with one studio light and then use rim light to separate him or her from the background. To sum up low key lighting is a highly dramatic way of enhancing the contrast in an image that has roots tracing way back to the Baroque period and beyond. Its characterised by a small triangle of light under the subjects eye on the shadow side of the face.

Graded with our custom LUTs and presets. You generally dont want to throw light all over the scene either because if youre after an atmospheric low key portrait flat lighting will instantly kill the mood. Im a fan of portraits with a narrow tonal range as they look more subtle and sophisticated to my eye anyway.

To create rim light the light is hidden behind the model. Lighting a low key portrait. And it looked great.

Start by setting your camera to an ISO setting of 100. The first thing to do to start shooting low key is to setup your camera with the proper settings. You can achieve this effect indoors with studio equipment or some ingenuity and outside at night in a dark area with a well-placed light.

Next is to test out your settings to make sure that the ambient light in the studio is not going to brighten your photos with light in areas where you dont want it. Whatever equipment you choose its important to be able to move the light away from the camera. I wanted to create a portrait of Randy in the Hollywood Glamor style of lighting similar to the vintage styled boudoir photo session with Olena.

Not surprisingly Rembrandt lighting. This will make your sensor less sensitive to ambient light and helps to prevent the camera from picking up extra light from unwanted ambient light sources in the studio. Low-key lighting for a dramatic portrait Randy has a look reminiscent of Ava Gardner so I asked her to be a subject for my book Lighting Design.