White Background Photography Tutorial: How to Take High-Key Pictures Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

hi I'm Tony Northrup and for Chapter six
of my book stunning digital photography
I'd like to show you how to take high
key photos high key photos have a bright
overall key to them and usually have a
solid white backdrop high key photos are
something that every professional or
even aspiring amateur photographer needs
to have in their tool belt you need to
be able to make a high key photo in a
studio or out of the studio so I'm going
to show you both high key photos have
been really popular in portraiture
instead of using those old like cheesy
painted or vinyl backgrounds nowadays
the background pictures is often just
solid white you also see high key photo
in catalogs high key photos are required
for any kind of picture of a product
you're going to put on Amazon but even
if you're just selling something
personally on eBay making a good high
key photo for it will really help you
make some more money so the first thing
I'm going to do is show you how not to
take a high key photo this is based on
my experience of seeing lots and lots of
photos people take their where they're
trying to be high Q but it's not really
working out for them so you see I have
my lovely bride Chelsea back here and
she's standing against the white
backdrop a lot of people do this just
against a white wall in their house so
I'll take a picture and we'll see how it
looks so those aren't bad Chelsea's
lovely but we haven't really gotten a
high key look that we're going for the
background is not clean you can
literally see like dirt and texture in
the wall behind you and that's common
because nobody has like a perfect white
backdrop even when you have a
professional studio it has a little
wrinkles and dirt and stuff on it you
can fix that with light believe it or
not another problem with that picture is
we have this dark shadow that's being
cast by Chelsea and that's because we're
lighting Chelsea and the backdrop with
the same light and you can't do that if
you want to get a proper high key photo
so we're going to do two things we're
going to move Chelsea away from the
backdrop so go ahead and step forward
Chelsea get right under this light there
that's good now that we have some
distance between Chelsea and the
backdrop we're going to add some light
to the backdrop now because we're in a
studio I'm going to do this by turning
on those two background lights
you behind her but after we finished
with the studio shoot and you understand
all the concepts we're going to move
into a living room so that you can see
how it's done in a more casual
environment so I'm going to use my
remote control system here just to turn
those lights on
so with those backdrop lights on I'll
take another picture and we can see the
difference so that's definitely a better
photo by moving her away from the
background not only did it allow me to
light the background separately from
Chelsea but it also allowed me to blur
the background a little bit and by
having a fairly short depth of field and
blurring the background it takes out
some of the texture from the wall so the
wall itself becomes less evident any
little dirt spots on the wall kind of
disappear but I want to take a look at
the back of the camera and show you this
picture here now I Blinky's turned on
and Blinky's will cause any part of the
picture that's blown out that's
completely overexposed to blink and
generally that's a bad thing except when
you're doing high key photography
because high key photography you want
that whole background to be completely
white and blinking and we don't have
that with this picture I'll show you the
histogram too so look at the histogram
you can see that the it spikes over here
on the right side but what we want for
proper high key photography is for it to
be pushed all the way up against the
right side so the background is good
it's bright but it's not quite perfectly
bright white now we have a couple of
options at this point I could just bring
that into Photoshop make some
adjustments and make the background
completely white and often that is what
you do but I try to get things right in
camera whenever possible especially if
you're doing fashion or commercial
photography where you're taking dozens
of pictures hundreds of pictures and you
need to process every one you don't want
to have to be pulling a hundred pictures
into Photoshop just so you can fix the
background at every single one so if you
can save yourself a whole lot of time by
getting that backdrop nice and bright
and white so I am going to raise the
levels on those two lights in the
background enough to completely blow the
background out
so it frees those two strokes in the
back all the way and now I'll take
another shot so I successfully
overexposed the background all right but
I introduced another problem I actually
had the lights in the background too
high and what happened is it washed out
the whole picture because the background
itself basically became a light source
it's reflecting so much light back at
the camera that we have this serious
back lighting issue going on and what
happens if you have too heavy of a
backlighting in a picture is the picture
starts to lose contrast because all that
light is overpowering Chelsea and it's
bouncing around inside the lens a little
bit and it just ends up looking washed
out and I have a good professional lens
on here if you had a consumer lens any
bit of overexposure would completely
ruin it so uneven under ideal
circumstances you can see that having it
overexposed caused a problem so this is
one of the secrets of high ki
photography you want to add just barely
enough background light to overexpose
the background but you don't want to
overdo it
that'll also help keep your recycle x on
the lights down so what I'm going to do
is I'm going to drop the lights down all
the way and then I'm going to take
pictures until they're just barely
overexposed until all the background is
blinking but then I'm not going to raise
it any higher so I want them as low as
possible where I can still have it
completely overexposed so I'll drop both
those lights all the way down
so backing the light back up we can see
that Chelsea's no longer washed out but
the whole background isn't quite
blinking yet so the background isn't
quite highly exposed enough so I'm going
to raise the background lights a stop
and we'll take another picture
so there we go by bringing the lights
down and then gradually bringing them up
and then stopping as soon as I see the
whole backdrop blinking I'm able to get
a perfect high key background without
causing that low contrast high backlight
situation now there is one more thing
that I'd like to do now you can see the
lighting on her face the foreground
lighting is a little bit Moody that's
because I just have this single beauty
dish turned on and that would be great
for a low key lighting situation if you
wanted some kind of dark and moody scene
if you're going for like sensual or
serious or intellectual but high key
lighting doesn't really lend itself to
that high key lighting is about like
happy family good times big cheesy
smiles and stuff and it's also about
nice soft foreground lighting so we want
to match the foreground lighting with
the background lighting and whenever I'm
doing high key lighting I also like to
have a fill light on and much more even
lighting softer shadows so I'm going to
turn this fill light over here up so
that it will balance and eliminate some
of those shadows on her face
so now I'll take
picture of Chelsea with that fill light
turned on now we have a perfect high key
background we have an expression that
matches the high key mood and we have
nice even foreground lighting that works
really well with it that's how you do it
in a studio environment but not
everybody has a full backdrop in studio
lights and stuff so let's go see how we
can do that just in your own home here
we are in the kitchen and believe it not
chelsea and i have actually done
impromptu commercial shoots down here
because we had a client and wanted their
dog in the shot and they couldn't get up
the stairs to the studio so we turned
this kitchen into a Heike backdrop
quickly but these bright white venetian
blinds work just fine as long as you
have some light on them so you'll see I
have here just a 10 15 dollar light
stand with two flashes attached to it
now remember with high key lighting you
need to like both the foreground and the
background so this light here is going
to go into this umbrella and I'll just
pull this sock over the top of it and
this flash here is going to light the
background the splash here of course
needs to be nice and powerful to
completely eliminate the backdrop and
just for the technical folks I'm
triggering these flashes using a young
no yn6 - 2 triggers they make them for
both Canon and Nikon and they're super
cheap they're like 45 bucks each they
work really well and these are my Jung
know yn 568 e^x flashes by the way I
don't get a dime from Jung no I just
like their gear it's cheap chinese stuff
but it works great so save yourself a
few bucks now right now I have the
backdrop light turned way down and this
light is turned up so it'll expose
Chelsea decently but I'll take a shot
without that backdrop light just to show
you the effect spin this around
that's not bad but just like upstairs
when I didn't have enough light on the
backdrop you start to see all the detail
in it even though this one has way more
texture than a proper backdrop we can
still blow it out by putting enough
light on it and the same holds true if
it were just a white wall so I want to
point out one thing about the flash that
I'm using for the backdrop it's turned
on its side it's twisted vertically and
that's because I'm holding my camera
this way flashes have a rectangular head
they don't make a round or square shape
like studio lights do they make a
rectangular shape of light because they
try to optimize the light to be the
exact same shape as your camera sensor
so if you're turning your camera like
this go and turn your flash sideways to
there's nothing wrong with that so I
have remote-control capabilities using
this yn 62 system so I'm going to go
ahead and turn that backdrop all the way
up using my camera
you
so with that backdrop light turned up
I'll just spin this back around to light
Chelsea and take another picture
so there we have it a very nice clean
high key shot you might still see just a
little bit of detail in the backdrop if
so you can just go into Photoshop or
Lightroom and just heal any spots that
you see and they'll disappear completely
you can also try dropping the whites a
little bit to make them completely
disappear the gear that I used here
didn't cost much at all these flashes I
bought for 165 each the light stands
like 10 bucks and these things as I
mentioned they're about 45 bucks there's
a lot of contrast in this shot the
shadows really fall off deeply and
that's because I'm using a single light
I could fix that with another light but
be easier just to hold up a big white
reflector that would cost like ten bucks
but you get the idea you don't need a
full studio to do perfect high key
portraiture if you liked this video I
have plenty more for you my book
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I have another book to my photography
buying guide that talks all about all
different types of gear including
wireless trigger systems like this
flashes light stands cameras lenses
everything anything you might want it'll
tell you what to buy and it will save
you thousands of dollars if you're more
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