Emma

Much better than the maniquins. I don't have a problem with the high key unless all of the detail is lost. Hard to tell on my monitor. The tones and lines of the hair are beautiful. The shoulders are a bit tilted to the right (her left). The eye contact is great but I am finding the eyes a bit lifeless without a catch light. Have you tried getting a catch light in the eyes? Overall a very nice portrait, stay with it and keep them coming.

Overexposed or under-printed. I know this is popular, but I still don't like it. Correct tonality will look better. Otherwise, I like the photo, though she looks a bit dour.

This photo is beautiful. I saw this on the "Latest Gallery Photo" and it caught my attention immediately. Which lens did you use to take this? Can you give us a clue about lighting. I like the high key effect personally.
Ara

I like everything, but am made somewhat uncomfortable about the blackness of the eyes. Uncomfortable not being bad or good.

I like it a lot....the tonality is beautiful...I like the contrast to the face and the shadow detail delineating the shape of the face....on my monitor I can see the catchlight..High one o clock..note the shadow under the nose for the highlight position in the eye.....what a lovely girl....

There is a difference between 'high-key' and overexposed or underprinted, though it is often ignored today. You cannot make normal subject matter 'high-key' through exposure (using the term 'high-key' correctly). High-key refers to the tones of the original subject. If the tones of the original subject are light, then and only then can you make a 'high-key' photograph. Sheets on snow, for instance, make a high-key subject, no matter how photographed. This is one of the things that makes this photo less apt. The girl is beautiful, no doubt, but a correct tonal rendition of the face would have been better.

Not at all what I know as "high Key", but a very interesting photograph anyway! The young lady is fantastic, but the face really in my opinion needs a bit more tone. I admire your effort here, and thank you for sharing this image with us! Charlie.....

High key as I understand it is as much a reference to how an image is rendered as it is about the tonality of the subject. Meaning a picture with a white background where the model's flesh and attire is rendered very light would be a pretty traditional high-key image. The model and clothing have less tone on the print than they do in reality. The use of a red filter to lighten the skin tones and a ringflash or careful lighting to remove as much shadow as possible are one set of techniques used to achieve this in B&W.

In colour high-key is often achieved with over exposure or at least exposure pushed to the brink and possibly a touch of underprinting (along with careful lighting and or a ringflash).

I wouldn't call this image High-key and it might look great printed differently, but it is a fine photograph as it is non the less. At the end of the day in my mind the emotive value trumps technical pursuit.

mrcallow said:

"High key as I understand it is as much a reference to how an image is rendered as it is about the tonality of the subject."

I know that a lot of people understand it that way, but in the strict (correct) use of the term it refers to the colour of the subject, at least primarily. A high-key photo renders subject matter whose 'normal' rendition is light tones as light tones. A lot of people simply overexpose and call that 'high-key', and that's not quite correct.

In this photo, the overexposure does detract a little from the model's facial beauty, though overall the photo remains strong.