Tonal contrast is where you have light tones and dark tones next to each other.
Tonal contrast is where you have light tones and dark tones next to each other. You can see this in action with all the photos in the article. But here’s another example. In the portrait below the model’s skin is lighter than the background (and her dress). The key to making this technique work is to make sure the background is in shade and that it contains no distracting highlights.