Many amateur photographers believe that anything well lit is high key lighting but that is not true. High key lighting is a kind of lighting technique in which there are no mid tones and the only shades you find are of white and gray. If a frame is lit by high key lighting then it would have very less or no gray and black tones.

High key lighting has been used by photographers for ages now. In earlier black and white images you would often see very well lit portraits. It was only in the mid 90s when realistic or new wave photography and cinematography came into being when photographers started using low key photography. High key photography is usually used or portraits and reflects a very nice and vibrant mood. If you use a flash on an ordinary camera, such as the Fujifilm FinePix J110, then it can technically be considered high key photography. For instance if you see the frame on your left, you can see that the entire frame is well lit and there are no shadows and dark areas. It conveys a very positive and larger than life appeal. This is the effect of high key lighting.

Generally in high key lighting, all the lights used are high intensity lights with huge base. It uses multiple light sources and has a uniform lighting pattern. In High key lighting, the lighting ratio between the key light and fill light is 1:2. High key lighting is often used for portraits and for product photography for commercials and print advertisements. A valuable benefit of high key lighting is that it takes less time to set and you do not need to change the lighting scheme each time you change the frame as the entire frame is well lit.