SHOOT LOW KEY
Use dark tones to your advantage for moody, atmospheric landscape scenes
Low-key lighting has been favoured for its dramatic style in photography and cinema for decades. Closely associated with film noir, low-key images focus viewer attention on one area of the frame by limiting contextual detail. They introduce a sense of isolation and limit the feeling that the scene continues beyond the edges of the frame.
Low-key effects produce strong contrast, with a prevalence of deep shadows. This can be ideal for landscapes, where we want to emphasise intense light sources and highlight detail in textured surfaces. With care, the low-key formula can be used to produce a theatrical look to create the appearance of a set or a highly controlled environment, which is unusual in a natural location.
As photographers, our job is to control where our viewers should look. We take a busy scene and find the elements that are most photogenic, placing these centre stage in our composition. Low-key lighting moderates the dominance of individual zones and objects in the frame. By using strong lighting we can throw less-important areas into shadow for both practical and artistic purposes.
To do this we need a deep understanding of exposure measurement and the way in which our camera interprets light in different scenes. Low-key images have a bias towards shadows, so we should enhance how darker tones are rendered, being mindful of overexposure. Overexposure in this context doesn’t mean loss of highlight detail, but rather a lack of dense blacks caused by the camera pulling detail out of the deepest shadow areas. This would produce a scene with reduced drama and an awkward lack of contrast.