Black and White: High/Low Key

This week's Project 52 challenge was focused on high/low key black and white images. The wording of the challenge was to pick either high or low key, but since I don't follow directions well, I ended up doing both.

Before diving into the images, let's chat quickly about high/low key images. I have always thought about them in terms of the histogram. Yup, I said it... the histogram. I'm a math girl, and I find the histogram super helpful when I'm shooting. It's really just a graph that goes from dark to light (left to right) and shows you how much of your image falls into each level of brightness/shade. So, if you see a spike/mountain in the left portion of the histogram, there are a lot of dark parts of your image. If you see that the histogram is shifted to have a spike/mountain on the right side, you have a brighter image.

I've got a background in statistics, so for me, a high key image is an image whose histogram is skewed left - a large curve on the right side of the histogram with a big drawn out tail to the left. It's a bright, airy image that is composed of a lot of light/bright parts with much less shadow/darkness. A low key images is the opposite. The histogram is skewed right - a large curve to the left with a down out tail to the right. It's darker with lots of shadows and only a few brighter spots in the image.

As you might guess, high key and low key images evoke different emotions and feelings. I tend to prefer low key images that have a bit more drama and mystery. They can sometimes be described as a bit moody or intense. High key images tend to have a lighter and airier feeling.

Some scenes lend themselves naturally to one or the other, but it can also be an artistic choice. Both the high key and low key images below were shot at Longwood Gardens in rooms that were well lit. I used the Lensbaby Edge 50mm.