Friday, 14 May 2010

HIGH KEY GULL


One effect in photography that I really enjoy looking at is High Key Photography, and I have experimented on a few occasions with this medium. It is basically an overexposed image on a light background but still retaining some pastel detail. This is a simple technique and quite easily obtained under studio conditions where lighting and backgrounds can be used to archive the effect.
I have been trying for some time to get such an effect in an outdoor environment which is much more difficult.
On Wednesday during a visit to Marazion the lighting conditions were very bright with a lot of very white cloud around, I saw this Herring Gull approaching between myself and the cloud and at this point the sun came out to add to the brightness. So as I was looking through the viewfinder I dialed in +2 stops of exposure the maximum on camera and just managed one shot as the camera was in single shot mode.
In the resulting image below the background is as shot and the subject has only had minor highlight enhancement in Photoshop to bring out the best High Key effect.




High Key Herring Gull.

6 comments:

  1. That my friend may not be the purists cup of tea but as far as i'm concerned - What a cracker. A totally new approach and one that hasnt been seen on a Cornish blog. I think this may inspire others to try this technique. Excellant effort.

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  2. dear my friend I like your blog. it's interesting

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  3. Definitely a corker of an image, Monty.

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  4. I love it. Quite creative!
    Happy weekend.
    Sunny :)

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  5. Very interesting shot, looks morelike a piece of art. The image certainly has atmosphere.
    Sam

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  6. Interesting technique. Thanks for sharing Monty.

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