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Friday, September 5, 2008

How Jewelry Is Photographed Makes A Decided Difference.


When setting up the original Jewelry by CnC Web-site, many other jewelry web-sites were looked at, especially the presentations that each were making of the various jewelry pieces presented for sale. It rapidly became very confusing, so the idea of taking a special photographic class on "Photographing Jewelry" seemed the right thing to do. A a quick sign-up with a local photographer presenting a class was done. Many thanks go to Barbara McNeely of bwh Web Designs for putting up with a photo novice and providing the skills needed to do good jewelry photography. But being taught these skills, a good jewelry photographer it does not make. Practice, practice and more practice becomes the name of the game. Reading books and journals, looking up specifics, finding good internet sites explaining special procedures, joining forums and groups dedicated to jewelry photography, rapidly becomes a necessity. Trying new ideas and suggestions, accepting critism and practice, practice and more practice, finally results in something to be proud of -- a picture that shows off what has been made. Initially it was thought that the picture shown to the right above was ideal. It shows the complete jewelry set, but it lacks the attention step and definite quality that is needed.
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The next step is to try and put some interest into the photograph. Various methods can be used to accomplish this. Placing the jewelry on a bust, partial head, figure or other humanistic figures look nice, but they don't possess that stunning interest that is wanted. Using colored, pattern or other types of backdrops look better than plain white, black or whatever the color or pattern may be, but still lack pizzaz. Once you get past all of these options, then a real serious dilema pops up. What kind of camera ? Of course with today's technology, a Digital Camera is definitely the answer. It would be way too costly and time consuming to take the many various pictures of the same item over and over if you had to develope the film and then print the pictures. So Digital Cameras, the computer and picture processing programs are a necessity. I am not going to go into what kind or brand of Digital Camera, what kind of computer or which photo processing program to use. There are as many different answers to those three problems as there are jewelry makers and photographers on the internet. I will leave that discussion to more knowledgeable persons.
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So, back to what to put in the jewelry picture. This is totally up to the imagination of the person making the jewelry or taking the photographs. An example of such is shown at the start of this posting and a second idea is in the above left picture. With the help of our daughter-in-law, who also designs and makes jewelry as Timeless Designs, and has a much better Digital Camera, a photo set-up system, and a good eye for backgroud items to go with the jewelry, you will be seeing much more interesting views of our jewelry on the Jewelry by CnC web-site, as she has the time to take the pictures and we can get them uploaded. So please bear with us, as I was informed today, she has some 500 photographs for us to go through and select the views we actually want to post.
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The same necklace and earring set is shown in each photograph above. It is made of Baltic Cognac Amber, Ivory Freshwater Pearls and Silver Links.
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