Introduction to digital imaging: Lighting.

Lighting plays a crucial role in how an image is perceived, in this entry I will use two examples, low key and high key to clearly illustrate this.

Low key lighting often uses only one source of light, a technique that is commonly referred to as Rembrandt lighting. This technique gives a predominance of shadowy areas used to create bold, dramatic, moody images, hence is commonly used in film-noir and horror genres.

High key lighting reduces the lighting ratio of an image, this was originally done for technological reasons due to early television and film equipment not dealing well with high contrast ratio's. This is a very popular technique with model and baby photographs as it softens tones within an image, concealing any imperfections.