The object of this challenge is to isolate your subject against a light background. This involves finding high contrast situations such as snow or bright sky as a background and exposing your image for your subject with your spot meter. Here are two tutorials that show you the basics.
Tutorial 1 and Tutorial 2
For inspiration click here.
Here is a High Key example from last summer. I had my camera on manual, and well before the cyclists showed up, I chose a grassy spot as a dark surface to set my exposure with a reasonable shutter speed and aperture by adjusting the ISO. (Note: on some cameras you have to disable auto ISO ) Then it was waiting for the right moment to take a series of images against a bright sky.
ISO 400 300mm f5.6 1/200
photo taken with the snow as background
another one from the snowy day ISO 400 f5.6 1/350 58mm
Very artistic. Although I do like the slight blue tint of the snow, have you considered using the white balance dropper in Lightroom?
Looking straight up a mountain ash. Processed in PhotoShop for contrast, texture and clarity. I was struck by the contrast of the bright red of the berries against the snow and bright white sky.
Highly processed tree trunks. This image is made to look like a “Bateman” painting
Here is the version with the fence removed. It looks like a major distraction. I got several comments. The AI remove was very poor, so I had to carefully remove it with the clone tool
My dogs are happy to pose so here they are in my backyard after I recovered from moving 1.5 tons of snow. This bank of same offered a good back drop.
Ruby the elder and female is first of course.
Taz
ISO 100, f/10, 1/250
Revised cropping
ISO 800, f/10, 1/400
Backlit oak tree after the big snowfall. I was doing test shots with my iPhone and meant to go out again with a camera but didn’t get around to it.
I used all the sliders to bring out the detail in the bark. The sky was blue so I desaturated the blue completely in Apple Photos on my MacBook Pro.
Hi Frankie. Did you make any adjustments? Cell phones are getting better all the time.
Shot this from my balcony on a foggy bright day. Just cropped. Settings: AP F5.6, S 1/250, ISO 100, FL 400mm
It is actually quite pretty out.
Some changes as directed by Karen
Back on the berry theme, I took this before the big snowfall against a very pale blue sky – I then selected the sky in Lightroom and dropped the saturation to create the high key effect. The foreground was then selected and the colours enhanced to make the image more dramatic.
This is a more subdued image shot Friday of a hoarfrost-covered branch with crabapples. The original image was very dark due to the very bright, overcast sky background. After pushing the shadow slider to the max, I used selective colours in Lightroom to further lighten the background and enhance the colour of the crabapples.
Hello friends. Diana and I are back from an epic adventure expedition cruise to the Southern Ocean — the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and then the Antarctic Peninsula.
I keeping with theme there were soem brilliant bright snow days., favouring high key images.
Elephant Seal image from Nov 10th. Handheld Fuji XT-5 w/ 16-80mm lens
ISO1000/ F11 (+.3EV)/ SS@1/1250secme
Cold and grey day on Friday Nov 29th so tried a few high key images on the street.
Fujifil XT-5 w 55-140mm lens.
ISO 680/ F 2.8/ SS@1/100 handheld..
A wonky bird house in my backyard in need of some maintenance next spring.
A dark image which was lightened and brightened with the sliders in LightRoom, but couldn’t seem to be able to remove the wires which are a distraction, also some of the red berries are washed out.
But at the same time I do like the image.
shooting around the house
Shot against a white sheet of bristol board with natural light.
f/4, 1/200, iso1000
Taken with my cell phone against a snow background. Increased the contrast to get rid of the snow background and also increased the saturation.
Elephant Seals in Antarctica are rather cute when young but they don’t look great when grown.
These guys were in the South Shetland Islands which are not far from the Antarctic Pensinsula.
I used m 70-200 lens; put my camera into APSC mode to give me extra length; f7.1; ISO 640.
In post, I increased the highlights and whites to soften the brown stains in the white snow.
Gentoo Penguin in the same location as the young Elephant Seals. Same settings as above.
It is amazing that the snow is as clean as it is around him so I had to add him in!
I shot this origami in a home-made light box by using four sheets of regular printing paper. I used two light sources directed from opposite sides. The light sources are a run-of-the-mill digital flashlight (the ones with side and front emitting light) and a typical overhead LED lighting bar. I held the light sources in each of my hands and had the camera on a tripod set to shoot with self-timer.
I shot this photo in the same light box as the origami photo using the same lighting and camera position method.
Log on snow that reminded me of a turtle. Taken at f/7.1, 1/1600 sec, ISO 250
Ducks on snow at Inglewood Bird Sanctuary. Taken at f/8, 1/800 sec, ISo 250