next photos - silver jewelry

More pictures for this week - a neighbour makes jewelry in silverclay. She needed good photos for her new website, and I need objects to photograph and test lighting setups.
Been busy for a few evening with them, testing different setups.



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First evening I shot all pictures in a similar setup. Everything in my mini studio/lighttent, giving a nice clean white background. I had a white and black bust, so I shot every jewel on it. Closeup of the jewel and full picture of the bust with totally white background. Technically correct pictures, clean shots, but boring. Decided not to use any of the photos of the white bust as the silver jewels didn't stand out enough. On the black bust your eyes are more drawn to them.

This picture is a slightly different setup and much more interesting to see (maybe I should crop it a bit more at the left). Still in the mini-studio, but background is underexposed. The flash was held camera top left, half of the light hit the edge of the top of the lighttent, other half was directly onto the jewel, pulling attention to it, while the angle still brings out the texture of the background. Strobe was dialed down a lot, just to give a highlight on the bust, not to make the whole background white..




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Different background. This silver hanger is very difficult to photograph - because it's flat and almost has no texture, any light that hits it from the front is reflected and created an overexposed highlight. Have some pictures of this silevr jewel on the black bust, and while it looked good, it was not totally what I wanted.

For this picture the strobe was held at the far right.
This brings out the texture in both the background and the brushed surface of the silver jewel. The highlight on the right edge brings out the tear shape.



25 Nikky made dinner, took a picture for her blog and her recipe program she now stores everything in and it can also store pictures.
Just a quick shot, strobe held in my hand camera left, dialed down so it wouldn't overexpose the left bowl.



26 Silver juwel draped over a glass vase.
Nikky helped me set up things.. she has more inspiration than me in finding different setups, bringing color into the scene. White reflector boards all around this, black board on the bottom.
This jewel is difficult to shoot, because of it's shape it's acting like a mirror reflecting everything in the room in it. It took a bit of testing to see where to position white/black cardboard and strobe.. too much white and you could not make out its shape, too much black and it just didn't look nice. Maybe I should've taken lightgrey paper to give the silver more a silver look :-)



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Jewels sitting on clear plexi with black paper underneath.
Flash with small softbox on it, aimed directly into the white background behind which is nicely reflected into the plexi.
I should've turned the bracelet so the lock is invisible in the back, front should be totally sharp too.. but other than that I'm happy with this picture.
One point of improvement - the circular ring on the left has a little purple stone in its center which you don't see well. A tight lightbeam of hard light (like from a laserpointer/led flashlight) directly in it could've made this stone shine more.