Low-key portraiture Now that you are familiar with high-key photography, it won't come as a huge surprise that low-key is the opposite. In a word, low-key photography is "moody." We're looking for brooding emotions, hints of melancholy, and a lot of darkness. In fact, the more of the picture that's dark, the better. What we're really going for is the hint of a shape. With some of the best low-key photos, you only see the simplest outline of your subject. As you've probably figured out already, negative space is of the utmost importance here. In low-key photography, less is more.