Hello,
I have been working on some studio jewellery photography this week and I wanted to talk about this on my blog. I was sent the ring by a new business, the ring and the box are both high quality products which is very helpful when it comes to close up marco photography. There can be all kinds of issues with jewellery photography, the first problem being the ring or item itself. Often the product can be poorly made which means fixing the product in post-production, or the quality of the product can be fine but it has marks or scratches which also need to be removed.
Other issues with photographing rings is there size, they are small and shiny products which does mean there is going to be some technical issues. Photographing some items is an issue because as the photographer brings the camera close to the subject and takes a shot, the product has a lot of DOF (depth of Field), which means there is a small amount of the image is in focus, most of the image is out of focus. There are ways to get around this and the best option is focus stacking. Take multiple images at the same angle, changing the focus point on each shot, then in Photoshop or some other software combine all the images together to create a high quality image.
The issue when photographing shiny objects is it acts like a mirror, everything near the ring can be seen in the reflection on the surface of the ring. It is an area of photography that only experienced photographers should attempt to get the best results.
Once all the technical difficult aspects of photography are out of the way then there is just as much difficulties to work on the image in post-production. Almost every aspect of the ring is changed and improved, highlights are added, dark edges help to separate the product from the background. Hours of work goes into creating one image.
The result I aim for not to over used Photoshop, keep details from the original shots taken which helps with a realistic look.
I hope you liked reading about my Jewellery Photography, if you want to know more or want me to blog about a different area of commercial photography then please let me know.
Thanks,
Phill.