What's high key and low key photography?

With high-key and low-key photography, the lighting for your photo is extremely high or low. This allows you to create a certain atmosphere. High-key and low-key photos often have little color. A high-key photo is very light and bright, while a low-key photo is very dark and looks more mysterious. You can use this for portrait photography, but it can also be interesting for animal or portrait photography. For example, photograph a white animal in front of a light background.

To take a high-key photo, it's important that your photo has little contrast. This means that your photo has few to no dark colors with high-key photography. A smooth, clouded sky is a good weather condition for high-key photos. If you slightly overexpose your photo, the sky will become a white area. You can do this with a slow shutter speed or a large aperture. With this type of photography, you'll barely see shadows.

Low-key photography is the opposite of high-key photography. You want as many dark colors as possible and a lot of shadows in your photo. Because you'll use little lighting for your photo, you should use a fast shutter speed and/or closed aperture. In contrast to a high-key photo, a low-key photo has a lot of contrast. This will provide a mysterious effect. You can use one light source to highlight your object and keep the rest dark, for example

A histogram is a chart on which you can read the quality of the lighting for your photo. If your histogram has a peak in the center, your photo has good lighting. If you took a high-key photo, the histogram will be on the right side of the area. This means that the photo contains a lot of light tones. With a low-key photo, the histogram will be on the left side with many black tones. Make sure the histogram stays within the frame.