Low key question.

[alpina]

My next submission is to be low key and one of my fellow students has asked me to photograph her with the intent of giving the image to her boyfriend as a xmas gift.

My thoughts are of her in something Christmasy and sexy, do you think the red and white of the props would work in the low key remit?

My understanding is that Low Key portraits are dramatic and convey allot of atmosphere and tension.

 

[Garry Edwards]

Low key is the absence of light tones, i.e. everything in the shot should be not lighter than 50% grey - so something with white in isn't really going to be low key, just as a shot with black or dark tones in it isn't going to be high key even if it happens to be against a white background.

But leaving terminology aside, there's no reason why red and white won't work in your shot. The name of the game is to control the lighting well, which will allow you to create the shadows that will make the shot work

 

[BadgerLover]

I've done a bit of low key work in the studio and it's a lot of fun. I'd use a different definition to Garry and say that the vast majority of tones need to be at the darker end; I wouldn't go putting a figure on the percentage of them, or how dark the tones must be, as it's quite subjective and varies depending on the type of shot you're taking.

I was purely focussing on the technical aspects of the lighting in this shoot as opposed to poses and composition but you can see the results from my first experiments with low key (and some high key) work here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39517694@N06/sets/72157622319030208/

I did another run last week with a friend (with the same idea as your fellow student - Christmas presents for our ladies) but haven't posted the results anywhere yet. They were a different use of low key than what you're after - I was lighting for muscle and bone forms with side lighting from a single monobloc to create the shadows I was after. I'll post the results if you're interested in seeing them but I'm not sure how much they'll help you out. My girlfriend has a thing for my hip-bones so I was trying to capture that specifically, as opposed to a proper portrait as your friend is looking to capture.

I think if your friend is trying to capture something a bit suggestive & sexy with a Christmas theme and want to work at one end of the tone curve, do high key instead. If you use very diffuse light from a massive softbox it's extremely forgiving of skin imperfections so she'll probably be pleased about that and, at least for me, there's something very cute and sexy about high key female portraits!

George.