Category Archives: Photography

Lessons Learned or How I Put the Photography Tutorial to Use

Jewelry, Photography, ,

Loryn’s photography tutorial would be useless if I didn’t actually put it to work. After watching her take photos, thinking about design and white space (which I had a lot of in my previous photos), and considering a photo list of all the shots you need when posting items to be sold, I was set loose with my camera and Photoshop.

I have been on a shell, mother of pearl and pearl kick lately in my jewelry. There are so many varieties of shells and pearls in so many colors and shapes that the opportunities and uses for them are too numerous to name or even demonstrate. I will show some of my tributes to mother nature’s wonder: Mother of Pearl.

Three shell necklaces nested together.
I call these my "UFO" necklaces.

These are the three I have completed so far. The pink and white necklaces are both made with pink shell donuts, white quartz round beads, and silver 6/0 and pink 11/0 seed beads. The black necklace is made of black shell donuts, black shell flat round beads, and silver 6/0 and black hex seed beads. I made the hook and eyes out of 18 gauge sterling silver wire.

Pink shell UFO necklace.

Black shell UFO necklace.

The difference in my photography before and after is rather dramatic. These are so much more clear and are visually interesting. Previously I had way too much white space and very little actual design. I would just drape the necklace in a circle and shoot the photo. Here I am trying to make the photos a little more dynamic. My camera is better than i remember it being (I haven’t used this one in a long time or all that often when I did use it) and the lights are wonderful (Thanks Loryn for letting me borrow them). My set-up is really pretty small and doesn’t take up a lot of space and being in a rather unused corner helps a lot. It is also really close to my worktable, so no more excuses for bad photos.

Close-up photo of the trio of UFO shell necklaces.
Nice close-up photo of the trio! Go Kristin!

And one more shot of my clasps from all three necklaces.

Close-up photo of the hook and eye clasps.
Made with 18 gauge sterling silver.

I think it was a very successful tutorial. Let’s all thank my sister Loryn for putting an end to my atrocious affront on humanity with bad photos. Thing of it is, I can appreciate my jewelry work more and see that it really is getting much better and more put-together now that I have some good photographs of it. Of course, I can also see all the flaws and errors much more easily with macro photography. etsy here I come!

–Kristin

Jewelry Photography 101

How to, Jewelry, Photography, ,

Loryn came to B-ton this weekend to help me get started taking jewelry pictures for my etsy shop. Photography class couldn’t start until I had the tools and environment under control. I had to clean up the are and get the photo table set-up. I have an old drafting table which has become my base, the lights are borrowed from Loryn, the camera is my old Fuji Film 3800 FinePix, and I bought a roll of banner paper from Pygmalion’s, the local art store.

Set-up of photo table.
I have hung the brackets and you can see the dowel that will hold the roll of banner paper.

Living in an A-Frame house can cause some difficulties in hanging anything from the walls, so to hang my banner paper which would become my photo backdrop, I purchased two closet rod brackets. I hung these from the walls and put a dowel though the roll of paper. This drapes down to the table and provides a great backdrop that I can replace easily and even write and doodle on with no costly consequences. Just cut and roll out another sheet and you are good to go.

Then came the actual tutorial.
—Kristin

The photo table with backdrop and lights on each side.
The full photo setup

Loryn here. This is what the full photography set-up looks like. After shooting thousands of objects for sale on eBay, I got the best results by having two lights balanced on each side of the object. The tripod is helpful, but not a necessity with Kristin’s camera, which has good image stabilization.

The power strip has to be close at hand (or foot, really), so we can turn the lights off and on easily. The photo lights are 500 watt daylight bulbs. They are very, very hot, and they have a 5 hour lifespan, so you only want them on while shooting. A truly professional set-up would include lights that are slaved to the camera, so they only come on when you press the shutter release. We’re not there yet, if we will ever be.

Jewelry positioned in the photo area.
Putting the jewelry in place

Here I’m trying out different positions for the camera and the jewelry. The camera has a 6X zoom, so it needs to be fairly close to get nice tight macro shots.

Loryn photographing jewelry
Photography in action

I’ve always thought that product photography is similar to taking portraits. Every object has a “face,” even just metaphorically, and a close up of that face is the shot you want for your thumbnails. Here is the “face shot” of Kristin’s pearl necklace:

Pearl necklace with dangle
Close up of Kristin's pearl necklace

Didn’t Kristin do a beautiful job designing this? She let me wear it when I got married, and it looked wonderful with my pink dress.

After the face shot, I pull back for the complete object. With necklaces, the challenge is to get the item to fill most of the frame, instead of a mostly white shot. It’s easier with a multi-strand necklace like this.

Multi-strand pearl necklace
The full necklace shot

After a few adjustments in Photoshop, the photos are ready to go! Check out the next post for more of Kristin’s jewelry!
—Loryn