Photography

Photographing jewelry is no easy feat. The lighting, getting close enough to see detail, and the artistic setting of it are all key parts. I am certainly no professional photographer. I have no training in photography. But I think I have a decent eye for what looks good (which is what makes a good jewelry designer).

Lighting was the first problem I encountered when I tried to photograph jewelry. Below is one of the first pictures of my jewelry that I took. That picture was taken with a flash and in natural sun light.

To solve that problem, my fabulous, studly husband built a light box for me. He took a cardboard box, cut holes in three sides and completely removed one more side. He put light tissue paper over the holes in the three sides. He put hard white cardstock across the back and bending down onto the front so that there are never any "corners" in my photos. Then he bought me industrial lighting and set it all up for me in the basement. And wa-la, a light box. Here's what the photo's looked like after that:

My next discovery was that while I liked the silky background, it was bringing out too much yellow in the background and I quickly ditched it for a clean white background.

The next problem I discovered was that the camera I originally had just couldn't handle getting as close as I wanted to get. The closest I could get to a tiny earring was still far too far away for the potential buyer to see detail. And I definitely feel that the photography of the jewelry I sell affects it's sale. So my wonderful, supportive, hubby bought me a new camera. Not one of the big, fancy, hard-to-use ones, but a newer, can handle serious zooming one. It has what it calls a Super Macro setting. And that is what I use most of the time when photographing jewelry. The Super Macro setting allows me to go from this:

To this:

Big difference, huh? You can't really tell how great the detail on these earrings is in the first photo. (By the way, these earrings and a matching bracelet are still for sale in my shop at the moment. Check them out here and here.)

Some day I hope to get an even better, fancy, hard-to-use camera. But in the meantime, I think things are working out well. Baby steps, right?