Low Key Lighting Setup

Experiment with Low Key Lighting for Unique Results.

Low key lighting setup. Let me know what you think and dont forget to like and subscribe. The other notable aspect in both images is the high contrast. 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.

Rim light is a very powerful technique when trying to produce a Low Key image. Here Im using a shoe mount flash on a lightstand with a 43 shoot-through umbrella modifier to create this effect for Figure 5. Set your ISO as low as it will go and your shutter speed as fast as youd like.

To create the effect cinematographers often use only a key light sometimes controlled with a fill light or a reflector. Soft boxes will give you a good disbursement of light from top to bottom on the model and give. First thing is to prepare 1 or 2 soft boxes of 1 meter to 120 meters long each.

For low-key lighting you need to limit the ambient light in your scene and closely control your light source. This accentuates the contours of. For low key shots depending on what source of light you are working with it is best to use faster shutter speeds especially if using triggers.

The next step is to start setting up your studio lighting for low key. Set your camera to manual mode. For classic low-key bodyscape photography you can use one light at a hard angle to create dramatic highlights against the form see the setup in Figure 4.

Heres a quick recap for you to brush up on the basics of low key photography. 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. Check out my newest video with Lana focusing on bodyscapes and lowkey lighting.