Lighting is the essence of photography, if you ever want to capture something from the selfie for your WhatsApp to the picture of that amazing panther in Jhalana Doongri, all of it need light to show the image, without light you will have a black frame, and with a lot of light you will have a white one. Imagine you have your perfect shoot, the scene you have look forever in your photography dreams, but when you decide to click the picture the image is totally different as the one you wanted to get. Have this ever happen to you? Well, to be honest it had happened to me a lot of times, ruining what I thought would be a perfect shoot is one of the most frustrating things when I am trying to show my talent. however, with time I have learn that this is the essence of photography, learn how to feel, sense and play with the light.
To understand how to make the light condition towards your goal, there are 2 different terms important in photography. High key and low key. Maybe you are trying to understand what all of this is about. Well, basically High key is when you have predominance of light in one picture. This means when you have a lot of light present and your image is almost white but wait! Don’t get confused… a high key picture is not the one you click without setting the light and came white. High key is a style! You need to prepare the setting, and know what you want, which parts of the image you want to be totally white and which others need to be visible.
By the other hand, low key are those pictures that have predominance of dark or muted colors. That means that you need a little amount of light to create a picture using this style. With the light, and usually this type of styles, it is possible to create and recreate different atmospheres to present our jobs. Create a concept and follow it is one of the hardest things to do in photography. But understanding these styles, you can feel free now to practice, and give a completely new professional look to your pictures!
If you want to understand better some of the principles of lighting, especially of the lows and high, we can use Lindsay Adler as a Referent. She is a Fashion Designer, from United states, that have made some workshops on how to control the effect desire in photography with the use of lighting. The treatment of concept will give the final touch to your pictures, and can change one flat image to a professional picture