All (High) Keyed Up?

I’ve always loved high-key images for their simplicity, elegance, and power. There’s a directness to them and no confusion at all about your intended subject. The technique is relatively simple, and yet for all its advantages, it’s been a while since I’ve thought to embrace it. Going into my recent trip to Kenya, I decided to remedy that by looking for opportunities to mix up my portfolio and go high-key, and I thought that might make for an interesting Sunday morning conversation with you. We’re a long way from the roots of the term high-key, which seem to come from film/TV. In early days, high contrast scenes didn’t translate well to the medium, so lighting ratios between the “key” light and the “fill” light were kept quite low or “low-key.” High-key, as you might guess, is the opposite. These days, high-key is as much a stylistic term as a technical one—a catch-all for a particular kind of look characterized by light tones and without dominant dark shadows. The images that…