High Key Lighting - Work Diary

Our task in today's lesson was to explore the technique of high key lighting, we had previously explored this technique in AS, so I already knew what the technique was. We watched a video on how to set up the studio to achieve a high key lighting effect, this helped me understand what the key light is (the main light), and what clip lights are (lights which point towards the background in order to make the image over-exposed.) I enjoyed doing this shoot, although I would not follow this technique through into my project.

Below is an image of how we set up the studio, with reflectors, different lights, a tripod, our subject and our camera.

My best image of today:

This image was shot on an ISO of 200, with an F stop of 6.3, and a shutter speed of 1/125, I slightly edited this image on photoshop in order to make it lighter, however I could have done this by changing my aperture to a lower number, in order to allow more light into the image. This is my best image overall as I believe it demonstrates the high key lighting technique effectively, as I took a photograph of a female, sat in a 'girly' position, with frills on her top- this directly links to the assumption that high key lighting is more often used on female's due to it's feminine ora. I like the image as a whole due to all of the colours working well together, contrasting the red lip of my subject which 'pops' out of the image. Moreover, I like how my subject is not looking directly at the camera, as I believe this can sometimes appear too staged, I prefer my images to appear more natural, and relaxed.

My worst image of today:

My image above was sot on an ISO of 200, an F stop of 6.3, and a shutter speed of 1/125. This image is too dark to represent high key lighting, this is why I believe it is my worst image of the day as it does not demonstrate the technique effectively. Additionally, the background is not completely white and you can see some darkness to the left of the arm, I believe this also ruins the image. If I was to reshoot this photograph again I would use a lower aperture, combined with a slower shutter speed in order to allow more light into the image; however, if these are lowered too much the image can become greatly over exposed (as shown in the image below whereby I did not have the correct camera settings.)

Progression:
I would not use this technique in my project as I portraiture would not work well in my nature theme, I am already using multiple exposure which combines two images together (e.g. portrait and a tree), which I believe will work more effectively than just a portrait alone.
If I was to reshoot any of my images again I would do a thorough check to ensure my camera settings were okay before I started my shoot, if I was in the studio this would involve using a light meter.