One of my friends is going to open an etsy shop for jewelry. She had a shop before but stopped making/selling jewelry when she had kids. Her kids are getting older and easier so she decided to take it up again. She said the hardest part before, was getting good pictures of her jewelry with her basic point and shoot camera, so she asked if I could help this time around.
Enter, stage right: fearless hobbyist photographer (i.e. me!)
Well, jewelry photography is surprisingly hard. Funny, because I love me some macro photography! Namely, it's hard to style the jewelry in an attractive manner (are the beads spread out just so, is the light catching the facets correctly?). Different tones and different materials (glass, stone, metal) did best under different exposure settings. How much of the jewelry should be in focus? Using a tripod with wireless remote, I sometimes couldn't get a good angle, so we had to prop up the jewelry at an incline to compensate. I used my various macro filters; sometimes my lens was only 4"-6" away from the subject.
Of course, I do love a challenge and solving problems. And using the wireless remote is hella cool. I felt all sophisticated and stuff. :)
On a side note, I used the "Live View" setting almost exclusively for this shoot -- it was just easier than cozying up to a tripod about 18" off the floor. Using the Live View entirely drained my fully charged battery in about just two hours.
Here are my favorites from the session:
These are great! The jewelry looks awesome and the backgrounds are complementary without being overpowering.
ReplyDeleteChristie, my friend is a scrapbooker too, so when I told her that some backgrounds would help, she brought her tub of paper.
ReplyDeleteI think my favorite is the last one in this set, with the "beachy" green earrings on the red/yellow vintage print paper.
If you check out the full set on flickr, you'll see some tagged with "redo" which are, clearly, the shots where I had issues getting a good composition or good focus.