High Key Lighting - Definitions Post

High key lighting is a style of lighting commonly used in film, photography and television which reduces the lighting ratio making it smoother/brighter. This technique highlights all of the face. This type of lighting is commonly used in beauty images, or on photographs of females, as it's seen to be a 'feminine style' of lighting. This technique is based on using mid-tone greys and bright whites, bright lights are used to eliminate any shadow, in order to reduce contrast, sometimes the image can appear slightly 'over-exposed'. 

Equipment used for high key lighting:
Tripod
Camera
A subject to photograph
Light meter
Honeycomb or snoot, depending how direct you want your lighting
Soft box (key light)
Back lights/clip lights X2

The above image of a baby demonstrates high key lighting effectively, as you can see all of the babes face, this image is purposely over-exposed in order to create an innocent atmosphere to the image. The baby's eyes are clearly in focus, and darker than the rest of the image, this draws the viewers eye's into this point of the image. 

We need more light on the background in our shoot, than the foreground. Our main light is the key light, if this was F8, to make the background lighter we would need more light on it, this can be between plus one or two stops higher, therefore the clip lights would have to between F11-F16.