Low key is my favourite way to shoot the female body. It allows playing with the light and shadows and experiment to a certain amount. And one has to be a lot wrong to not create a good image.
As we have enjoyed Allenas natural beauty already in high key, let’s enjoy her pictures in low key, too.
The image above was an experiment using a normally completely useless lens, the Lensbaby 55mm portrait lens. If its aperture is closed quite a bit, it is just a not-so-perfect normal lens, but if you open the aperture, you get “artsy” results, and if you’re lucky, there’s even a bit of sharpness somewhere in the picture. And if you’re very lucky, like in the image above, the sharpness is where it should be.
Experimenting is what I do often, for example using “masculine” light on the feminine body, as shown above. This leads to a more harsh, even more natural look.