anne sailer

Photographing jewelry is tough. Why? A jewelry piece is typically reflective, small, and designed to be worn — not photographed flat. As an art jeweler, I make many pieces and want to photograph them for the purposes of documentation and marketing for sale. Hiring someone to photograph ALL of my pieces would be prohibitive. So, I do it myself. Here’s the first installment of what I’ve learned to make my photos as good-looking as possible: LIGHTING.

Anne’s Top 5 Lighting Tips: 1) Don’t use a flash.  2) Do use natural light.  3) Do photograph outside on an overcast day or inside on a bright day.  4) Do use a white bed sheet, a white sheet of paper, a white curtain, or another white cloth to act as a barrier between your light source and the piece you’re photographing.  5) Do position your piece so that the light source is coming from the side and not directly behind the piece or directly behind the camera.

How did I photograph the above necklace? I set up on a leather trunk next to my living room window. I laid out the necklace in a gracefully-curving way on the top of the trunk, in an area where the light was starting to merge into shadow (see the shadowy part towards the bottom-left of the photo?). I put my camera (on a tripod) parallel to the window, so that the light was coming from the left. My white living room curtains did a great job of softening the outside light. I turned off my camera’s flash and set it to a high-speed/action setting (sometimes that’s called the “sports” setting, sometimes it’s called “kids & pets”), also using the “macro” setting. I angled the camera so that I could see some of the surface patterning on the focal stone. And then I snapped the photo (a few times, ’cause I can digitally-dump the ones that don’t work). The key to this photo is the lighting. I could have played with camera settings and angles all I wanted, but if the necklace was in direct light, or if I’d used the flash, the photo would have been worthless.

Next Installment: Angling That Darn Camera