From Clicking to Creating-High Key

High key is done a lot in portrait photography, but it doesn’t have to be limited to just that. Basically, high key means a photo that when you look at the histogram, it’s sitting firmly on the right hand side. Usually this means the image is “blown out” or the highlights are too much. But from a creative stand point, it can be quite interesting. For this weeks Dogwood 52, we are to shoot either a high key, or low key photo. Low key is, you guessed it, just the opposite.

I opted for high key in a landscape shot. I did do some post processing on this shot, to bring out the highlights even more.

This is another example of a high key image I took the other day. The sky was cloudy, so that provided me with a good white background which is great for high key photography.

Roxy wasn’t thrilled about being a model the other day, but I did get a shot of her against a white backdrop I set up outside. Using a white background is what portrait photographers do to achieve this look.

This shot is from last year. But the sky was perfect behind this wild horse, and again, I did some editing to enhance the look. Converting to black and white was also a good choice for this one.

High key is good to practice outdoors if you don’t want to set up, or do portrait photography. A flower against a sky, an animal, or some kind of landscape. Experiment with the idea, and see what you come up with.

The 2 Lil Owls this week is, movement. All the birds in flight photography I have done this week, provided me with a lot of images to choose from. This image of a red-tailed hawk isn’t super sharp, but I think it shows movement more than others I took. The blur in the wings actually enhances the idea of movement.

I love the shape of the wings, and how you can see the movement he made as he turned sharply.

One quick lightroom tip this week. The latest update to lightroom has included the option to turn off, or on, the image preview when you hover over a preset. When they started the full preview when hovering, I thought it was a good idea. Now I find it annoying, and it seems to use way too many resources and slows everything down. Now you can go into preferences, and turn it on or off. The small box in the left corner will still show a preview, just not the full image.

Ok, more fun ideas for this week. Let’s see what you create. Share your photo links in the comments below.