BEAUTY + THE RIGHT LIGHT | {high key} portraits

When I heard Leah was leaving for Tennessee in a few weeks, I knew I had to get her in the studio for another photo shoot. We had planned to do some high fashion images outdoors using really cool lighting, but with all the snow we've had lately, it just wasn't possible.

For our second photo shoot - hopefully not our last - I wanted to experiment with High Key Lighting. You often see this style of lighting in fashion and product photography. However, its quickly becoming a trend in newborn and child photography.

High Key Lighting produces relatively shadowless images with a “blown out" white background. One of the goals when using this technique, is to make sure you separate your subject from your white backdrop. All too often, you'll see an image taken against a white backdrop and areas of the subject are overexposed, therefore disappearing into the background.

Here are a few images from my first attempt at High Key Lighting with the beautiful "American Girl" Leah.

I guess its the white background, but looking at these images reminded me of GAP commercials.

This last image was my first attempt at using a gel to change the color of my backdrop. Pretty cool huh? I think the image has an 80s feel to it.

Check back in a couple days for more images from our photo shoot and a farewell to the best model ever!