Low key photography - first attempt

DriedStrawbery · Sep 2, 2017

Hi All,

Was excited to try out some low key photography since it seemed fairly easy with one light source. Sharing a couple that I liked, pls provide your comments to help me improve and what are some key things/challenges to try in this aspect of photography!

Thanks! Looking fwd to more creativity with light sources.

Tomasko · Sep 2, 2017

What's with the halo in the background?

OGsPhotography · Sep 2, 2017

Good start!

It would be nice to see the eyes and more fill in face. Whatever is in the hands in the first shot is distracting me a bit, try just one prop. The second photo might be stronger without the teddy.

Braineack · Sep 2, 2017

quite like the lighting pattern here, just work on the posing.

smoke665 · Sep 2, 2017

Really like the 2nd shot. Maybe just a tad more light on the child's face and this would be fantastic.

DriedStrawbery · Sep 2, 2017

Tomasko said:
What's with the halo in the background?

Which one is that seen in ? Had to remove the softbox from one of them, wondering if there were remnants.

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Tomasko · Sep 2, 2017

In both, but it's more visible in the second photo. The whole background looks completely black except some kind of weird halo around the kid. Try to select a higher brightness, maybe you'll see it too. As it is, it looks like you cut him out of some other picture and/or made the background black using a brush in Photoshop, leaving a different background behind him.

Not sure, maybe it's just a visual artifact caused by a strong jpeg compression.

DriedStrawbery · Sep 2, 2017

Thanks all for the comments. Will try to improve on the lighting on the face. Will get some reflectors in the setup as well. And the kids will hopefully learn to pose

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SquarePeg · Sep 2, 2017

Only viewing on my phone but I don't see any haloing.

Tomasko · Sep 2, 2017

Not sure if haloing is the correct term, but I've just upped the brightness to illustrate what I mean, hopefully now it's more clear. Maybe it's not visible on your monitors, but I can see it on mine Samsung (24'' fhd). For me it ruins otherwise very nice pictures.

DriedStrawbery · Sep 2, 2017

Tomasko said:
In both, but it's more visible in the second photo. The whole background looks completely black except some kind of weird halo around the kid. Try to select a higher brightness, maybe you'll see it too. As it is, it looks like you cut him out of some other picture and/or made the background black using a brush in Photoshop, leaving a different background behind him.

Not sure, maybe it's just a visual artifact caused by a strong jpeg compression.

Good eyes!

You are right, I brushed black to get rid of the softbox on one side. I used a brown background as I dint have black, so had to ide black brush all around to make it even.

I only have LR, so couldn't easily brush the existing by color over the softbox.

I'm getting a blank bg now. Also need to learn how others handle the background for these type of shots!

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