King of the mountain. Not sure if this is acceptable as 'wildlife' or not, but thought it was a good candidate for high-key images.

This has been fun, not yet completely satisfied, I will keep working on noise etc. Thanks Steve !

Turtle in lake, first attempt, suggestions?

I thought I would give it a try.

Yellow Legs

This is a picture which looks a lot better in black and white. Thought not high key , thought I will post it here. Nikon 810 with Tamron 150-600 mm. Taken in Amboseli. 1/800 s , F8, 350mm , ISO 160

Thanks, Steve for the interesting technique. I thought I'd give it a try with this photo from Ft. DeSoto State Park in Florida. The original had a light blue sky, easy to take out in LR Nikon D850 with Sigma 150-600 at 600mm, 1/2500 sec f/6.3 iso 280

A young Black-Shouldered Kite shot and edited in high key a couple of years ago

Momma and baby Elk.

This was my first attempt the other day. Good fun

I have been looking for a decent image to post. Finally got one that is close while on a photo drive Tuesday. What drew me to a more high-key presentation is teying to outline the feather tips against the sky. A flat sky did not help with that wish, but this is what I could get so far. Will see if I can make it more "high-key" with a few masks and other adjustments. This is a 7mp crop.

Bighorn lamb chasing mom up a cliff.

All-seeing frog; late to the party, but this sure was fun!

Female mallard portrait.

Don't know whether you'd call this high key?

Sharp-tailed Sandpiper flock.

I took this photo last winter with a snow background and I choose it for the B&W exercice, following Steve's video.

NorthernFocus said:

One of the rare B/W images I've done.

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To me, this image is actually high key and many of the other images shown, while very nice, are not high key but are high contrast. Just my take on the subject on the subject. Here is what I found on a couple of web sites:

High CONTRAST has sharp blacks and crisp whites. Low contrast has a wide range of mid-tones but no real extremes. The histogram on a high key image is way over to the right, at least by 50% or so.

Here is what another web site said:

The Difference Between High Key and High Contrast

Now we know that a high key has only a limited amount of tonal values. There are only pixels present that are brighter than 50% gray. This way the image will have a very fragile look, often without a clear sense of depth due to the lack of contrast.

If you add dark pixels in the photo, it won’t be a high key photo anymore if you hold on to the strict definition. If you also bump up the contrast on top of that, adding pure white or dark pixels, it will be a high contrast image. In other words, a high contrast photo isn’t a high key photo.

fstoppers.com

High key is very nearly all white with no sharp contrast. I do love the very contrasty images that are being shown, but I also think it is somewhat important to differentiate between the types of image. Again, just my thoughts on the subject . The image posted by Northern Focus is a prime example of a high key image. The term high key comes from how the image was originally lit with a "high key" light.

Thanks, Steve, for the video and starting the thread. Been messing about with high contrast images for a while now. While I can't always predict if I'll like the end result beforehand, I really enjoy the process- especially when it transforms an otherwise uninspiring bland color image. I use an old free version of Silver Efex Pro as a starting point.

Not sure if these qualifies as "HK" or are more regular "B&W" with high contrast, I'll let you judge it:
Yawning at the Chobe River, Botswana:

DSC_5872 by Marcelo Cinicola, on Flickr

Playful Elephants at the Chobe River, Botswana:


DSC_3641 by Marcelo Cinicola, on Flickr


Zebra trio grassing - Mara North Conservancy, Kenya:

Z92_7897-T by Marcelo Cinicola, on Flickr

Nice set. They're higher key than some of the others posted.

K9Kirk said:

Nice set. They're higher key than some of the others posted.

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Thank you Kirk!

Maybe this isn't high-key, but it's about as high-key as you can get in a dark forest. Great Horned Owl at the Nisqually NWR in Olympia, WA. Very low light under the tree canopy. Shot handheld at 1/25. Minor camera shake visible but overall I'm happy with it in B&W compared with the color version and the very bright green leaves in the background. Thinking it could make a nice print.

OwlBeBack said:

Maybe this isn't high-key, but it's about as high-key as you can get in a dark forest. Great Horned Owl at the Nisqually NWR in Olympia, WA. Very low light under the tree canopy. Shot handheld at 1/25. Minor camera shake visible but overall I'm happy with it in B&W compared with the color version and the very bright green leaves in the background. Thinking it could make a nice print.
View attachment 72839

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Very nice. I like all the different tones.