Top Lighting
Key from straight above that hollows the eyes and isolates a figure in a pool, as if judged by a ceiling or a god.
What it does
Top lighting drops the key from above, often nearly straight down, so the brow throws the eyes into sockets and the shoulders catch a clerical sheen. Emotionally it judges. The character is isolated in a pool, as if by a god, a prison or an office ceiling that does not care. Gordon Willis used overhead practicals and soft top light in The Godfather to sink Brando's eyes and turn rooms into chapels of power. David Fincher, with Darius Khondji on Seven and Jeff Cronenweth on Fight Club and The Social Network, returned to overhead isolation until architecture felt like a lid. Use it for confession, crime, bureaucracy and any scene in which the institution is taller than the person. Do not use it as beauty lighting, and do not combine it with a cheerful high-key fill, or the hollowed eyes will look like a mistake rather than a sentence.
The prompt
Replace [Subject] with what you are shooting. Everything else is deliberate: the gear, stock and lighting are what push a generator towards this look.
Works well in
Midjourney, Runway Gen-3, Stable Diffusion
Pairs with
Low-Key LightingPractical Lighting
The Prompt Atlas
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