How To Photograph Jewelry Necklaces

Necklaces are one of the jewelry pieces that will immediately capture people’s attention. For some it can be the central point of their whole wardrobe and accessories, keeping an eye on every detail of the necklace itself. Taking a photograph of a jewelry necklace is a lot like wearing it; you have to wear it with attitude to give character to the jewelry piece.

And the same goes for jewelry necklace photographs, achieving the best jewelry necklace catalogue cover will take a lot of imagination and technique to make it appear attractive to your prospective buyers. In an article I wrote about how to photograph jewelry, style and technique really matter. So go ahead and take some time to read that article.

Long Necklace Jewelry Photograph Approach

Whether you want the pendant or the chain to be in focus, a good quality picture of

A long necklace should consist of the significant element of the necklace. If you want to focus on pendants, then you might just use the help of the “sparkler light” that was mentioned in the jewelry photography article. Keep the lights focused on the pendant making it appear bigger than its normal dimension.

Now, if you want something that will feature the necklace as a whole neckpiece, you may take the photograph from above the jewelry piece, taking into consideration the lighting, exposure, and sharpness of the image you are taking.

The necklace may appear smaller but your customers will have a great view of how the necklace will look like if they wear it. Arrange the chain and beads, or pendants so that the finished necklace image will come out rustically simple. Nobody would think that it took you 2 hours to take a photograph to come up with the best possible jewelry necklace photograph.

Short Necklace Jewelry Photograph Style

One way to style a shorter necklace is to present it like your customers are going to actually wear them. The design should look like it drapes around your neck area so that it flows as your body moves. A diamond shaped style of the short necklace will resemble that piece when worn, so arrange it like you are going to wear them yourself.

Sometimes, there are pieces of a jewelry that is hard to style, you may need to elevate the piece on top of an acrylic paper, black or white, and from there take a shot from every angle. That way, all facets of the necklace can be shown and your customers will have an idea of how gorgeous the necklace is.

Your question on how to photograph jewelry necklaces can be answered by just following these really simple steps. You may incorporate a thing or two in the design and style, but it all depends on how you see the end result of your photography session. So play a little bit with the camera, research a lot and you’re on the next step of bringing your jewelries to the next level of picture galleries!

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How To Photograph Jewelry Suitably

If you have started an online jewelry business, you don’t get to interact with your customers the way brick and mortar businesses do, what you can do is set up a first-class gallery that will showcase your jewelry products for they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and clear, crisp images will tell your customer how exquisite your collections are.

Jewelry pieces are small and often are shiny and lustrous on its own, so understanding how photography works will let you enjoy taking good pictures of your product. Taking good pictures of your jewelry pieces will enhance the marketability of your products; however, there are certain points in jewelry photography that needs to be well taken care of. Among these elements are: lighting, sharpness, contrast, and exposure.

You must learn to study the effects of the components in jewelry photography, creating a sparkle that doesn’t strain the eyes, using “black ice”

Lighting, Sharpness, Contrast, And Exposure

Lighting

Have you ever noticed that when you photograph your own jewelry using a bright flash creates a very bright finish that usually lessens the beauty of your jewelry?

Lighting is the key; this is the most important component of jewelry photography. Normal diffused or soft lighting works best for jewelry photography. A good example for very good lighting is this 18k ring that is simply stunning. All the needed elements are found in the image and will lure your customers to buy one of your pieces.

It is not advisable to use an on-camera flash as I think you have tried many times and it did not do any justice to your piece of jewelry. Rather, use continuous lighting to visualize the finish result of your photograph. Proper lighting will illuminate and highlight the focal point of your jewelry and will hide blemishes if there are, plus the fact that you can actually edit the photograph afterwards.

Sharpness

One trick to that is putting your camera on a spot-focus mode, DSLR and digital cameras alike have this feature, you just have to scan your camera’s manual how to put your camera in that mode. Spot-focus will only mean that the camera is looking at a wide area and base the focus on that area.

For a sturdy capture of your jewelry designs, a tripod is a must; this will minimize flimsy images so purchasing a good tripod will be an investment.

Contrast

Think about it, if you are trying to capture an image of an amethyst beads bracelet, will you put that in a purple filled background? You have to visualize contrast where your jewelry piece will stand out as the center piece of the image.

You can use a background color that will compliment the jewelry’s color, hue, and texture. This necklace with quartz pendant is an example of complete contrast.

Exposure

If you are a beginner at jewelry photography and you want to get smart ideas about exposure in photography, visit this page where it has a clear explanation about EV or exposure value. This will surely help you a lot in achieving the correct exposure for your image.

How To Make A Gemstone Sparkle In Jewelry Photography

It is difficult enough that you can’t photograph a jewelry right; it must be very difficult to take a picture of an image of a faceted gemstone. A light tent or box will do wonders for that problem. You can buy an EZ Cube light tent or make one of this light box that works perfect for all your homemade jewelry projects. Both works magnificently depending on your budgets, as I said only your imagination and creativity is the limit!

Normally, there are two lights positioned on two sides of the light box or ten, you need another light for the “sparkle dazzle”. You need to adjust the brightness because the third light is not diffused by the light box or tent. Make sure that the “sparkler light” illuminates the gemstone well to create a sparkling effect.

Black Ice Jewelry Photography

A black ice is a term used by motorist that creates an illusion of a matte-surfaced road that looks clear and dry, making it dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorist to pass by these seemingly safe pavements.

But what is black ice photography? Why use the metaphor? It is simply the use of a black acrylic sheet with a soft background that creates a dramatic effect, plus the ice creates a certain coolness effect of the image that gives a certain glow on the covers of catalogues or magazines. So that’s why images in these publications look great, don’t you think?

If you want to make one of these you can set aside an hour or two of your time and make this homemade black ice photography kit at your own convenience at home, or buy this Table Top Studio black ice photography kit that will lessen your worries in making one.

So really, as much as their a thousand and one rules in photography, it is best to follow the basics. Lighting, exposure, contrast, and sharpness; all the rest are just pieces of your imagination that will bring out the best of your beautiful creation. What’s important is you believe in your product and taking a photograph would just be the sum of the effort that you gave making it.

Enjoy this new applicable knowledge and make the best of what you have. You will never know how to photograph jewelry properly if you don’t try. Go ahead, make that click! Click!

Technorati Tags: jewelry photography, Photography, Picture jewelry

Good lighting for jewelry photo shooting will help you come up with the best possible image, great images are important for portfolios or if you are setting up your online jewelry store, this can make or break the image of your jewelry, whether you captured it in a landscape or portrait position. Most of professional photographers have plenty of photographing equipment to use in creating perfect spot-on images. As to some artisans, with no such skills in photography, they don’t have the technical idea on how to perfectly capture the best image of their handmade jewelries. Their skill in photography is limited on piddling small details like figuring out the right lens would be suitable in capturing a wonderful picture. In addition, building a professional photography studio would cost too much for these people.

However, there are a few not-so-expensive options of building your own photographing studio. You can start looking around to those materials at home. As an established jewelry business finding a good sales rep, if you have the budget, is a great investment as they will have a lot of knowledge to share with you on how to take great photos to increase your sales.

To come up with good lighting for jewelry photo shooting, you must balance the real and fake lights. Most of the people just use digital or automatic cameras to take pictures of their jewelry items. Before taking the picture, they make sure their items look good just by adding a few background to enhance its photographic image. However, after taking some pictures and viewing it on screen, most of the images come out blurred by bright hot spots and some may even come out dull or very dark. This is very common due to imbalanced lighting on the item and the strength of the flash is too strong. This is because the camera cannot see the light around the object; the light reflected from the object should be measured and should compensate accordingly.

The most appropriate flash in good photography is called fill flash. It uses a little amount of extra light to fill out the shadows that can make catch lights, which are fine reflections of light on a shiny surface. A good example of which is a professional portraiture, it gets rid of shadows and creates a catch light.

For indoor photo shooting, you must prepare lots of light. You can use your normal light from an average lamp or ceiling light called Tungsten. These very yellow/orange lights give your pictures a very orange cast look. Similar to tungsten, fluorescent lights also produce bright lights and are usually green. With our naked eyes, we don’t simply see it because our eyes are just processing the different sorts of lights with a built-in white balance. Oftentimes, it is more appropriate to use a blue daylight bulb and some cheap lamp stands. A nice blue-white light thrown out by daylight bulbs simulates a real daylight illuminating a work area without giving a bright orange color to everything in the photograph.

In an outdoor photo shoot, you’ll need a sunny/cloudy but bright day, a white cotton bead sheet, your jewelry pieces, a friend or washing line, and your camera.

In doing some outdoor photo shoots, it would be a lot easier to have someone that would serve as a stand over to the piece that would block the sun using the white sheet. The sheet acts as a diffuser and helps distribute the light evenly all over your work and illuminates your piece without a blurred contrast. You can as well turn off your flash because the amount of light from the sun is enough to make your camera work without the automatic flash. You can use your washing line as an alternative if you don’t have your friend. Just place your sheet over your line and secure it with pegs so it doesn’t slide off, then set up your work in a bright spot beneath it.

To set up your self-made studio indoors, you will need a large white, cloudy transparent plastic storage container to reflect and diffuse the shine of the light. You can also use a light box where you can set up your jewelry pieces but it can only work well with cast-eye beads, crystals, glass and any translucent and transparent beads. The light box will give a gentle light through the crystals or glass beads and illuminate them. Use a white sheet or some of layers of tracing papers to dull the light if the glow is too strong.

Try to build this last option called a light dome. This is very affordable and so easy to make. Just prepare two liters of plastic bottle of milk and pull the label off. Cut it in half. Cut a big hole at the front area for your camera. After that, just set up your jewelry pieces, pop your camera into the hole, perfectly focus it to your pieces, and then shoot. The dome will catch the light and it will be evenly distributed.

It is important to bear in mind that natural light is always better compared to artificial light. Best results regarding jewelry photo shooting usually come from pictures that have good lighting techniques without any use of camera flashes. Using a tripod is highly recommended because it makes you take pictures in longer exposures thus, making rich and more detailed colors without the unwanted glaring effects on your pieces. Planning and designing your own jewelry photo shoot is a great way to showcase your work in a portfolio or magazine, if you take the steps listed above then you are sure to create some very professional looking photos.

Technorati Tags: good lighting for jewelry photo shoot, jewelry photo shoot, jewelry photography, photograph jewelry

Technorati Tags: jewelry photography, jewelry photography tips, jewelry tips, jewelry tips for success