Week 9 :: Photo Formula

This week’s blogging prompt is to talk about the second stage of a project. Since I posted how I start a project here, my next step is photos; so, I thought I’d share a little about my photos and what goes into them.

My photo formula is pretty simple: natural daylight + macro setting + white background + editing. It took a lot of reading and experimenting before I really narrowed what I like, and what I feel shows my pieces the best. Take a look:

I try to keep everything as simple as possible to keep the focus on my jewelry, and I don’t use too many props. The props I do use all serve a purpose – to prop up a necklace, or to show how earrings or a necklace hangs. And I know some people think a white background is too plain, but I really like the reflections and shadows I get on the one I use. Plus, like I said above, it doesn’t interfere with the colors of the piece.

So, there you have it. Now, I’d love to know, what’s your photo formula?

Footnote:

I don’t use my lightbox for finished jewelry anymore, and I’m slowly redoing the last remaining pieces that are shot in my lightbox so all the backgrounds will eventually match.

If you need to use a lightbox, check out Strobist’s $10 Macro Photo Studio tutorial to build your own. Do a search on Flickr for lightboxes to get an idea of set ups. You’ll want powerful enough daylight light bulbs (I used three 100 watt light bulbs from Home Depot), and I’d also suggest playing around with backgrounds, too. I ended up with a brown background on those photos because, strangely enough, that’s the only background that didn’t interact with the colors of my jewelry – those colors are as true to life as a monitor will allow.