Most times when I am demonstrating a low-key lighting setup, I am keeping it simple and demonstrating a single light low-key setup. But you can always add more lights. In these photos we did a two light low-key setup. The first set is of me but to be honest this lighting technique works better with an athlete or someone wearing hat. So, I brought in someone wearing a hat.
This is the bare bones of this technique, and it is worth practicing occasionally because you can build on it. You could throw in a key light and fill light and use this as a rim lighting or just add a key light. Regardless, it is useful to know how to do if you have the lights to pull it off. Once again, everything you practice, regardless of whether or not you use it consistently in your actual work, is stuff you can pull out when it’s moment arrives. If you have been practicing, it will come out with ease, if you haven’t you may stumble at that moment.
Anyway, obviously this was done with two lights. The only modifier were reflector dishes on each light. The lights were strobes, but I could have easily used speedlights instead. Each light was just off to the side and back to my subject and adjusted as needed from there to meet the need of each individual shot. Thankfully, with such simple modifiers moving things around was easy.