Improving Jewelry Photos!

While writing this blog, I've gotten helpful tips from friendly jewelry artists regarding taking photos of my jewelry. I appreciate the openness of these blogging buddies, thank you all! One of my goals for 2012 is to improve my photography techniques.  Below are the top 8 suggestions I've found that will remind us how to improve our photos.   By the way, the photos on this post are my favorite photos I have taken of my past designs.

1)  Jewelry is very difficult to photograph because it’s shiny highly polished surface reflects, in many cases, up to 99% of the light it receives. If you use flash photography, you’ll usually end up with glares and hot spots. The key is to use continuous natural light which has the ability to evenly and accurately reproduce all the spectacular colors found in the different elements of jewelry. 

2)  A key element of successful product photography is white balance. You need to be able to program the white balance setting on your camera. Although many cameras will come with pre-program options, you need at least one custom white balance option. This means that the camera can "read" and self-adjust itself to be able to take pictures under many light conditions. 

3)  Setting the Depth-of-field in your camera is an important element in photographing jewelry. The first thing we need to do is to take advantage of the maximum depth-of-field that any camera has to offer. The camera should be set to manual mode so that the smallest aperture (For commercial consumer cameras use F8.0, for professional camera use F16.0 ) setting can be selected. This will allow us to focus the entire piece of jewelry, rather than only parts of it.  The second thing we need to do is to focus the lens to get an image as clear as possible. Most digital cameras have an auto-focus option which can be used, please select this.

4)  Cameras need to control the amount of light so that an image is not too bright (over exposed) or too dark (under exposed). Similar to our eyes, light enters through the lens and strikes the inside of the camera. Digital camera uses a charged coupling device (CCD) to capture the light of an image. Think of a CCD as 'film' in a conventional camera. Therefore, term exposure generally refers to a combination of aperture and shutter speed control to obtain the correct amount of light.

5)  When photographing jewelry, we recommend you to mount your camera to a stable surface (either a Tripod or a lighting systems' "L" bracket) in order to get the sharpest photographs possible. If you hold the camera with your hands, it is very likely that you will slightly move the camera while photographing (even if you don't notice - because we as humans can't perfectly hold it still) , and your photos will come out blurry.

Note: The above (1-5) tips were taken from MK Digital Direct, where I found an article for "photographing jewelry", here. 

6)  Jewelry Arrangement and Prep:  Spend time arranging jewelry. Clean the jewelry if needed. Polish and remove finger prints. Lay it nicely. For chains, spend time to even out all links and to lay it in a perfect circle. For fashion or artisian jewelry this may be a little tricky simply because it's made of various materials and it just doesn't like to sit perfectly on its own. Use blue-tac to fix it where you want it.

7)  Taking photograph:  Take enough photographs for each peace. Use camera built-in display as a guide only. Colors and brightness will look slightly different on the computer screen. You can adjust some of it afterwards, but try to take a perfect shot in the first place.

8)  Post-Processing:  Restrain yourself from using too many features of the photo editing software. All you need to do is manually adjust Brightness and Contrast, and perhaps use 'Sharpen' feature. Don't apply any automatic adjustments, as these will get confused with too much white in the photo, or too much black.

Crop to the area you want to keep, save in internet-friendly format (eg 400x300) and you've got a near-professional photograph. Reuse the same photograph for 'zoom-in' crops. You won't be making images larger, instead you'll be cropping from your original, adjusting and saving.

Digital camera with 6 mega pixels or more will preserve enough of the detail for zoom-in's. If not happy, re-take photos of the detail.

Note: The above tips (6-8), were taken from a "Call of the Wild Photo" article, here.

Other random photo tips from the blogosphere:

*  Etsy has fantastic resource articles for photographing your merchandise.

*  Sometimes you can purchase an old macro lens in good working order from a local photography club’s equipment swapmeet.

*  Create a mood and atmosphere. Backdrops to use are: old vintage books, music note sheets, hat boxes crystal knobs, vintage mirrors, roses, vintage furniture, cream colored mugs and even plates.  Try not to clutter the setup or it will detract from your creation!

*  Always try to think which background goes best with the materials used in your jewelry. They can be from nature like sand, grass, rock, wood or just a simple nice textured paper or fabric. Neutral backgrounds, or backgrounds with some light texture but that let the item be the star.

Practice, practice, practice!
What is your favorite photography tip?

Happy Creating!