Jewelry Photography Techniques
Good photographs are essential for selling jewelry on the internet. Fundamental in producing a good photo is having the right equipment and knowing how to use it.
I am not a professional photographer but I do take photos of my jewelry with slowly improving results. It has been very time consuming to investigate the various photo set-ups and digital cameras, to organize my own lab and to learn the basics of photo-editing software. There is also a certain monetary investment to be made in acquiring adequate tools. Thank goodness that in the digital age we no longer have film and photo development and printing expenses.
I would like to share with you the essential elements that I have learned about jewelry photography.
Light Tent for Jewelry Photography
To photograph jewelry I use a light tent (made from an old bed sheet) suspended from the ceiling. Light tents or domes come in many shapes and sizes and most are reasonably priced. I opted for this homemade solution as commercial light tents were not readily available in Italy when I began doing photos.
The only lighting in the room is from the moveable 6400K daylight bulbs suspended on top of and along both sides of the tent. I have verified that one can get a good quality photo in daylight coming through a window or on the shady side of a building if the jewelry being photographed does not have a reflective surface. The photo should not be taken in direct sunlight and if the jewelry is shiny it will reflect the surroundings - you, your clothes, the camera, the curtains, the ceiling, anything.
Light Tent for Jewelry Photography
It looks like there is a monster trying to get into the light tent. The "monster" is a Nikon D50 camera with a Signa macro lens mounted on a tripod. This is basic, essential equipment with no frills or extras added. I am not telling you to buy this brand of camera or lens but you do need a digital camera that does RAW files, a macro lens and a tripod to keep it all steady during the long exposure times frequently used when photographing jewelry.
I use all manual settings, preset white balance, no flash, delayed shutter release, RAW file size, RGB color - probably doing what everyone else is doing - and trying to pick up more techniques with time.
Inside the Jewelry Photography Light Tent
This is what the camera sees - a white chamber filled with diffused light. You can see how the light tent provides a disturbance free photographic enviornment. This is necessary to photograph well jewelry objects that have a reflective surface. The tent or dome should have one small opening through which is inserted only the lens of the photographic camera. Through careful orientation of the jewelry one can normally avoid the dreaded black lens reflection.
The shooting platform has non-reflective glass raised about 2 cm above the background gradient. I move the side and top daylight spectrum lights to adjust the illumination and this is the tricky part. To avoid dull areas and hotspots you must check what the camera is seeing when makiing light changes.
Inside the Jewelry Photography Light Tent
A jewelry object has been placed on the non-reflective glass above the gradient paper. We are ready to take a photo of this beautiful silver pendant. The position of the object on the gradient determines the lightness or darkness of the photo's background. I print my own gradients on opaque photographic paper using the PhotoShop CS3 program. Periodically I need to renew them as they will change slightly in color balance and intensity through time and with exposure to light.
It is important to use a middle grey card to preset the grey value before each shooting session. These cards are a precise color of grey and are available through photographic supply stores. Every time you switch on your camera, even if you turned it off for just a few seconds, you must do a grey preset.
Photo of Silver Pendant Madison
I present to you the photo of my Madison pendant which is made of fine silver, pure gold, 18K gold, and a volcanic beach pebble, is from the Embedded series and is one-of-a-kind jewelry.
The RAW file was imported to a photo-editing program on the computer. I did a curves correction for highlights and shadows. I then selected a background point and did a curves correction for color. Then I used the unsharp filter, did the crop, sized the image and saved the file for web and devices.
