Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Photography and portraiture - How to take low-key photos

How to take low-key photos

Manual exposure mode (M block) is the best choice for low-key photography, and the aperture can be adjusted according to the brightness and contrast of the subject. ? Low-key photos are suitable for black and white and color photography. Black and white low-key photos, simple and pure.

Low-key photos (which can also be understood as dark photos) are photos with black as the main tone and dark overall, which is contrary to high-key photos in visual sense.

The characteristics of this kind of photos are usually that most of the space is occupied by dark gray or black gray, black objects and their backgrounds, and the objects displayed in the picture are bright, even if the proportion is small, they can attract people's attention. The aesthetic feature of low-key photos is deep and dignified, which has obvious visual components compared with high-profile and middle-tone photos.

Therefore, the composition of low-key photos must meet three conditions: first, there is a large black or dark visual space at the shooting site; Second, the picture is bright; Third, when allocating the layout space of the picture, priority should be given to the gray and black parts, so that the represented objects occupy local positions.

Low-key photos have a unique style and are often found in advertisements, portraits and other subjects. Photographers can construct pictures at will with their own ideas. Low-key photos have certain limitations in news and documentary topics that reflect social life:

First of all, the photographer should check whether the scene has the environmental conditions for low-key photography; Secondly, when using dark environment to compare the subject image, we still need to wait for the ideal state and properly handle the spatial proportional relationship between the subject and the environment; Thirdly, pay attention to whether the atmosphere created by the tonal relationship is suitable for the expression of the theme.

Exposure is the focus of low-key photography technology. As long as we grasp the core point of the main image, we can ensure the clarity of the image. The overall environment in low-key photos is dark, and the automatic exposure mode of mobile phones and cameras is not desirable.

Because this exposure mode is in the process of photometry, its electronic photometry measures the overall brightness of the viewing frame and takes the average brightness of all objects. At this time, the brightness of the main body of the picture is often much higher than the average, and the photos taken will be seriously overexposed and lose the original texture level. Manual exposure mode (M block) is the best choice for low-key photography, and the aperture can be adjusted according to the brightness and contrast of the subject.

Low-key photos are suitable for black and white and color photography. Black and white low-key photos, simple and pure. Color low-key photos are not colorful, and the colors presented are often clear and delicate. And the proper use of color also helps to set off the emotional atmosphere of low-key photos.