Hello
My name is Max and I’m doing jewelry photography in Israel.
As a jewelry photographer (part of product photography), there are many considerations that have to be done in order to photograph jewelry. Jewelry is one of the most complicated things to photograph for a product photographer.
Product photography is a complicated one. The photographer have to showcase the jewelry piece in it’s best light, angle and composition as well as to pick good background.
Glass with texture on background
Jewelry can be shot as a stills photo at different angles, but it can be shot on a person wearing it, either on ear as an earring or on a chest as a necklace, usually closeups. One of the reasons is that if you shoot wide angle with person, the jewelry can become a small compared to a human size, hence usually closeups without face are shot, necklace on chest as a closeup or a earring on an ear as a closeup.
Watch with liquid splashed to showcase it’s water resistance
Sometimes watches and other types of accessories can be considered as a jewelry photography as well, as those items are usually small and also have metal parts. Watches and jewelry can be shot on different backgrounds, which can be glass or even organic one, like coal or wood, to give to it more organic look.
The background and the angles will be determined by the customer with a photographer. Sometimes there is a need to show a pure jewelry piece cut from background color as PNG file, to cut it’s color on bg as It will be shown on white background on the website, which will be considered as packshot jewelry shot. It involves post production- the step where the retoucher or a photographer is cutting very precisely the jewelry piece from the bg. Sometimes the piece can be lit in a such way that the background will be pure white, which will make it easy, as it doesn’t involve cutting it in post production later.
Sometimes the need is for an ad. If you want to make a multiple, dozens or hundreds of shots, probably you need it for the website to sell it on. But if you need one piece for advertisement, then I can propose different ideas on what to shoot on, which composition and angle to choose, if to seek for natural background or maybe some artificial one will be added later. All those decisions will be made by photographer and can be shared with the client.
A ring on painted acrylic
Sometimes there are jewelry pieces that have A strengthening messages on it- engraving, so it’s important to find an angle, where the lighting will lit the engraving in a such way, that the text will be visible but in the same time the jewelry piece will show it’s color, if it’s silver, then it should look like silver and if it’s gold, to show the gold color.
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Silver necklace with engraving
Jewelry color is a pretty important thing in a jewelry photography and should be shown in a correct way. It’s important to calibrate the professional display to show most precise colors.
Retouched ring on painted perspex
This genre of photography is very interesting, in the same way complex and the client have to be able to explain the goals where it will be used and how much post production is needed. For example, all jewelry pieces have some scratches. Some are visible and some are not. If it’s for an ad, more serious retouching is needed. If it’s for web only, less retouching is needed in removes those scratches.
Also another thing is the dimensions. Even I shoot at close apertures, meaning the front side of ring is in focus, the rear part can be blurred. The photographer have to explain the client that there are some possibilities, either to make it smooth blurred, or to make a dimension of the ring, depending on the level of the retouching that client needs and expects.
Artificially made dimension with facets
Artificially made smooth circular dimension
In some case focus stacking is needed, you want to make all the ring in focus, which requires do to multiple exposures in different focus areas and then compile them in post production (editing)
I’m Max, a jewelry photographer and I invite you to contact me about your need of images of the jewelry.
Full galley of my jewelry photography can be seen here.
You can contact me if you like my work and want to photograph you jewelry. Thanks
