High-key photography is one of my favourite photography techniques, and it's a great way to optimise those too-dull overcast days. It's perfect for showing off the finer details of feathers and birds in general.
But first, what IS 'high key'?
It's a general art term that refers to a style that uses light tones or colours, creating a bright and airy effect. High-key compositions have a limited use of dark shades, instead favouring highlights and mid-tones.
This approach often evokes feelings of optimism, openness, or delicacy, as it minimises shadows and strong contrasts.
High-key art is often used in impressionist painting, photography, and illustration to create a mood that feels gentle, fresh, or soft, and it's frequently associated with daytime scenes or positive, uplifting subjects.
High-key photography is a style that uses bright lighting to create images with minimal shadows, soft contrast, and a bright and light feel.
The focus is on producing an image that is clean, fresh and usually slightly overexposed. It’s commonly used in portrait photography, product shots, and some types of nature photography to set a bright and positive tone. I like the illustrative quality it can bring to a photo, almost making it look like a drawing.
Creating a high key photograph is relatively easy, but you do need to pick (or create) the right shooting conditions.
Choose the Right Light and Background
Lighting: Ideally, shoot in soft, natural light. Dull overcast days work really well because the light is diffused and gentle. A little bit of gentle sun is OK, but avoid bright sunny days with a lot of contrast - it just won't work.
Background: Use a bright, plain background, usually the sky. You can also use a white or very light-coloured backdrop if the subject is in a controlled environment or you can position yourself to shoot with a light coloured distant background - dull flat water and sand also work well. I've moved position to where cars and buildings provide my light background too. I shot this Robin, moving to one side so there was a caravan behind him in the distance instead of busy grass and scrub, so I could do a high key shot.
Adjust Camera Settings for High-Key Exposure
Exposure Compensation: Increase exposure compensation to overexpose the image slightly (+1 to +3 stops). This will make whites brighter, and shadows softer, but be cautious to retain some detail in the bird itself. Personally I don't use exposure compensation as I'm a visual shooter and I adjust settings purely by eye - but I do consistently under-expose. This technique is pretty forgiving as most of the work is done in post processing.
ISO: Shooting at a lower ISO (under 2000) does help to retain image quality. But I'm always banging on about needing a fast shutter speed for birds so bump that ISO up if you need too. You'll probably need to use a noise reduction filter.
Shutter Speed and Aperture: You image must be nice and sharp as overexposing will bring out details - or lack of them - if your image isn't sharp enough. As well as raising your ISO, I recommend you shoot with your widest aperture (lower f-stop number) to let more light in, allowing for faster shutter speeds and create a shallow depth of field, which can further enhance the effect.
Focus on the Details
Make sure the bird’s eye, feathers, and unique markings are in sharp focus, as these will provide a visual anchor in the high-key image. You don't necessarily need all the bird in focus, but strong feather details and a sharp eye will really help to create a winner.
Although we want details, don't shoot too tight and allow room for cropping later so you have the possibility of moving your bird into a 'rule of thirds' position.
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Post-Processing for a High-Key Look
Here's a step-by-step editing process done in Lightroom, but you can use any post processing software, most have the same basic tools.
Here's an ideal starting point with this unedited image - clean background, fairly evenly exposed and a sparse composition - not too heavy on the details, but enough to retain interest!
And another ideal starting point, this one slightly overexposed, which is the look we're aiming for, without blowing out the highlights in the bird.
It's not too much of a worry if foliage gets a bit blown out - this is a creative effect rather than a true representation of what you're photographing. Have fun with it!
It's only a few clicks to get these images into 'high key'.
But I want to show you how forgiving this technique is so I'm going to start with a less-than-ideal-image. Underexposed and shot against late afternoon sun, you might think this Nankeen Kestrel is on the delete pile.
We do have a lovely wing and tail fan though and it's fairly sharp, but not perfectly sharp all over (it doesn't have to be!). In just a few simple steps we can still turn this into a nice finished image.
Before I started editing, I ran the image through the Lightroom AI Noise reduction filter with a factor of 50. As noise reduction can affect edits, I find it's best to do noise reduction first.
500mm, ISO 2000, 1/8000th (a bit toooo fast which is why I'm underexposed!) f/7.1
Step One: Seems counterintuitive on a too-dark image. But we're going to trim back the highlights significantly. I'm using Lightroom Cloud version, but you can use any program as most of the tools are similar.
Step Two: Next we're going to bring up the shadows. The basis of what we're doing is evening out the light.
Step Three: Also check the contrast and perhaps soften it a little bit. We don't want much contrast to keep the light and bright look - but we don't want to be washed out either! So adjust a little at a time, paying attention to the details, especially the highlights and the focal points such as the face and eyes.
Step Four: Now we're going to add a significant amount of exposure. Keep an eye on your highlights when doing this - make sure you're not blowing out the brightest part of the photo. I usually move it where I've just blown it out, then trim it back just enough to bring back the detail. You can see the image is a little overexposed at this stage, but this is the look we are going for.
Step Five: We've lost a little detail adding a lot of extra exposure, so to counter-balance I use the Dehaze tool and the Clarity tool - just a little bit for each. I always use caution with both these tools as they can give your photos an really artificial look. Creative is good but obvious over-editing isn't so nice.
The key to editing is to not overdo it! Take the slider a bit too far, then bring it back to a happy medium.
Step Six: We're nearly done, but a side effect of using the Dehaze tool is that it does tend to 'yellow' images, so if needed, we can adjust the white balance to add a touch more blue.
We started with a colour temperature of 6300 and just cooled the image a little bit to 5900 or so. You can also read my blog on White Balance for more about colour temperature.
Step 7: Optional! There is a one more optional step if you have Lightroom or software that offers masking, you could add a mask to the sky area - I used the sky tool - add a touch more exposure to bring the sky to a cleaner white. Of course this depends on your starting image, you may not need to do this.
Adding the mask....
And then upping the exposure on the sky just a little more. We don't want to add any more exposure to our bird.
Now we can INVERT the sky mask and do a few further tweaks on our bird if we need to.
And we're done! Here is our finished High Key image, achieved in just a few minutes of editing!
Dramatic change from our original image, here's the two side by side:
It's not perfect: you could also use the brush tool in masking to curb back the slightly blown out bit on the beak and face .... but you get the idea.
Starting with an image that was exposed correctly at the start would obviously give us a better end result, but you can see these simple steps do the job really well, even with a relatively poor starting point.
I always make adjustments in small increments and really look at the whole image to check for artefacts or problem areas before I move onto the next step.
You probably already have an image suitable to test this out so give it a go!
Here's our two better quality images with a little tweaking using the exact same process as above to create the High Key look:
Experiment and Adjust!
With practice and patience and a little experimentation, you can really have success with this technique - it will have you racing out to shoot on those dull days!
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