Joys of Jewelry Photography

Joys of Jewelry Photography

When collaborating with Jewelers and Gemologists we get to go to parts of the world that are often rarely seen and truly unique. Think about it, jewelry and precious stones are costly and artistic creations. Often these pieces exist as a one of a kind item and as such have great personal sentiment to the artist. The photograph of these art pieces should not only capture the material qualities, but also the richness and rarity, the artistic combination of stones and diamonds, as well as the idea of the designer, the feeling of form, and the purpose.

This can be quite a challenge considering the highly reflective nature of the item and the subtle colors. Needless to say, this challenge is enhanced when a black and white image is required. The great danger is that all lightly colored materials will look alike, dead white with black shadows.

The keys to fine jewelry photography are sharpness, lighting, exposure, feeling to form, imagination and in the case of gemstone photography, trying to create some sparkle.

Lighting and Background

The first rule for almost all jewelry photography is that strong lights are useless. In my opinion, all too often most forms of photography are ruined by having lighting that is too powerful and the subject is over lit. This is particularly a challenge with jewelry photography because the darker stones and metals or parts that are in the shadow at the same time must not be underexposed.

This is exactly why most commercial photographers work with a light tent. A light tent provides nice soft lighting for jewelry and makes for a pleasing image. However, the light tent may not provide the direct lighting necessary to "light up" faceted gemstones. Faceted gemstones like diamonds need to be illuminated by a light source that is positioned at nearly the same place as the camera.

Light tents can be commercially bought or easily made with a variety of materials. Muslin, opaque Plexiglas, rip stop nylon, or even polyethylene can be used. You basically set up a frame work in the shape of a rectangle (open box) and have the open end facing the camera.

One tip that will save you many headaches in trying to color correct your images is to make sure that all the lights in the room except for the lights you are using to take your pictures are turned off.

To take the photographs you can use tungsten, blue bulbs, halogen, fluorescent, and quartz to name a few. Some time to give extra sparkle I will use an old slide projector.

For advertising “tent” photographs are exceedingly dull. Even though they do show shapes and forms and workmanship, they lack brilliance and sparkle. There are two ways to get around this difficulty: one is in the choice of background, the other is to redirect light by using small pieces of tin foil and/or small mirrors.

Focus

For close-up jewelry photography, you need a camera with good manual focus capability. Use a tripod.

Exposure Cameras tend to underexpose images when capturing subjects with white or very light backgrounds. The easiest way to prevent dark, underexposed images is to use exposure compensation.

Most digital cameras have fairly easy-to-access exposure compensation controls (labeled as "EV" for Exposure Value). If your images are too dark, try adjusting the exposure compensation. A setting of +1 is a good place to start.

Set-up

Wax is a great invisible hand when it comes to standing up small pendants/charms.

1. Just place a small bead of wax on the bottom of your charm or pendant to stand it upright. 2. Instead of using a bust, drape the chain in a meandering fashion around the charm. I use a makeup brush to push the chain into place.

3. Be sure to clean your jewelry first

4. Spend some time on the composition