High Key Portraits - Tips? Books?

[smieglitz]

OnF, I deleted my smartass post but wasn't quick enough apparently to not have it seen. Sorry. I posted when frustrated by your comment. Hope you didn't take offense personally. It was intended more generically than specifically though I now realize it didn't come off that way.

I'll crawl back in my hole now.

 

[smieglitz]

No, it preserves the black, but brightens highlights and mid tones (depending of course on the extent of the under exposure, which is a critical factor).

I think we must have a different idea of what black is. I'll leave it at that, and exit the conversation.

 

[cliveh]

I think we must have a different idea of what black is. I'll leave it at that, and exit the conversation.

Maximum black can be achieved at a certain exposure, after which more exposure still retains it as a maximum black.

 

[bvy]

I think we must have a different idea of what black is. I'll leave it at that, and exit the conversation.

Please don't. You have some good ideas, and I'm still following and learning from everyone.

Actually, I was going to ask for more details about the shot you posted. Was your photoflood inside a reflector, or shot through some modifier? I ask because I tried a similar approach (bouncing my AB800 off a low white ceiling) but can't seem to control the light spill. Of course, I only have a reflector and shoot-through umbrella (with no black backing) so maybe I need more stuff.

If I've concluded anything at this point, it's that high key is more about subject and lighting then development and printing -- acknowledging, of course, that certain adjustments can be made in those processes to enhance the final result. So I've actually expanded my research to digital photography material and have done some set up shots with my digital camera, just to gauge the modeling of the light and overall exposure...

 

[M Carter]

In a book on David Bailey (Birth of the Cool) there are a couple of high-key portraits. He used a lighting tent - a technique borrowed from his mentor, Robert French. The maximum size I've seen is 48" cube on B&H, so I presume a scaled-up version is not commercially available. But the results from such a tent appear worth the effort to create/improvise it.

A few posts up, I described my high-key lighting setup which is essentially a "light wall" that can also be a "light corner".

If you want anything along the lines of a light tent for people, it's a simple matter of laying, say, 1/2" conduit across two stands and draping diffusion over the crossbar. Pretty simple to create, say, an 8' square which you light from behind, or setup in full sun with diffusion overhead.

With 4 stands (corners of the cube), three crossbars, and a lot of material, you can make a cube with an open-end for the shooter and a "roof".

I own all sorts of photo-designed diffusion fabrics, but when I was starting out with this look, I just hit the fabric store, carried some bolts out into the sun, and found something with the quality I liked. I still use that same fabric to this day to make very large diffusion walls.

Here's an example, in this case it was a large half-circle of conduit and a lot of diffusion fabric - just cheap fabric store nylon that was almost-sheer:

 

[kintatsu]

Amherst Media publishes one by Norman Phillips called Lighting Techniques for High Key Portrait Photography. They also have one for low key and middle key.