Handmade Jewelry by the Window.

 

I shot a little collection of glazed ceramic  earrings. They are and handmade and painted my a Pacific Northwest artist. Every piece is unique!

The art director/artist   wanted  to shoot with natural light and to emphasize the organic feel of the collection, with a minimalist use of props. We used leather, a wood slate and some beach driftwood.

Shot with a wide aperture (f4.0) on an overcast day. Window light and  a white panel on opposite side for fill.

The wide aperture forced me to pay attention to the very narrow focal plane...imagine an inch or two thin slab perpendicular to the lens at about one or two feet away. Where to focus the viewer attention and how to angle the camera compared to the surface on which the earrings rested was the challenge of this shoot. I  handheld the camera rather than using a  tripod was too limiting for the amount of pieces and the time allowed.  I used a shutter speed of 1/80-1/100th and ISO100-200, depending on the light of that moment.

Minimal editing, just cropping and adding some local clarity/contrast and  tone warming.

 

It's a Fine Line

 I had the opportunity to shoot a line of fancy skin care products list for Fine Line .   These are the results. 

I kept post production to a minimum and tried to get a mix of interesting catalog shots and a few more splashy 'hero' shots, where I played with the bottles as if they were skyscrapers.  The one with the incense smoke was a superposition of a few different images.  Keep your windows open before before the studio gets too smokey :).

Diamonds are a photographer's best friend.

 

Yes it has been a while. I recently had the chance to shoot a large jewelry collection, ranging from antiques to gaudy 70ies gold bracelets.  I had not had the opportunity to shoot tiny objects with excessive amount of reflections before so I was excited.  I had to shoot many pieces  in a short time, but I wanted to experiment  and get a few interesting images rather than  the usual clean on white background images for a catalog. 

So I went for a  simple geometric background  and relied on contrast, shadows and bold colors  to highlight the details. I wanted to highlight the 'substance' of these not so subtle pieces.  So I used:

- black plexiglass

-white marble slab samples (from a bathroom remodeling project!)

- dark grey paper background

 I also went for a macro lens, a  stabilized Canon 100mm f2.8 which was super fun to use. I even used it handheld for a few shots (I know I know)  and  images were still quite sharp. 

Set up: One softbox on top and a gridded strobe 1-2  stop down and behind the object, opposite to camera. (remember: the further  away this light is  the harder the shadows will be)   Just remember that  with a macro lens depth of field is truly  minuscule so dial up your flashes, close down  the aperture to  f20+ and beware of glare. Minimal post processing, but make sure to clean up your set from dust!