Friday 18 January 2013

Lights, camera, earrings! (oh, and snow!)

My mission to get more organised has continued this week in between teaching and making lots of clasps. Remember the new photo set up I showed you here? I have finally, after five years or so, bought some new, proper photography lights and umbrellas to throw lovely diffused light on my jewellery. They arrived on Wednesday but I only got round to opening them this afternoon - we had a snow day today so while the boys were relaxing after a morning playing in the snow I went and played in the workshed!


It's going to take me a while to get really happy with the photos I take with the new lights - I only got the chance to play for an hour or so - but I'm pleased so far. I took some quick photos of a couple of pairs of earrings I've made for the Art Jewelry Elements Earrings Challenge, and they are definitely a lot better than the ones I took last week, but I want to find a few more props to show off the jewellery better on my new background as I don't think the lovely wooden box that I've used for a few years now goes that well with the lighter backdrop. I'll get there! Both pairs of earrings are now available on my Daisychain Jewellery etsy shop, and I've pinned them to the AJE Earrings Challenge Pinterest board too. If you haven't had a chance to go and look at the Pinterest board yet please do so - there are some really beautiful entries so far!

5 comments:

  1. Hi, well done on getting the new light setup, the composition of your photos looks great but your pictures are really dark. Do you have an exposure setting on your camera, if so you need to increase it so that the pictures are lighter.

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  2. I recommend Photoshop elements to correct your lighting.

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  3. Thank you for your comments and suggestions, both of you - that is kind. These photos were taken in the first half an hour after setting up one of the two lights I've just bought, and published without any editing except cropping. There is most definitely room for improvement! One of my jobs tomorrow is to move the photography background over slightly to make room for the second light as the lights are much bigger than my old ones! As for the exposure, unfortunately as you know, the longer the exposure the more shaky your photos can be unless you use a tripod. And I just can't get the angles I like with a tripod as the camera tips over! Believe me, I have tried! I'll get there, it's just frustrating that changing one thing has set me back three years in my photographing - this all started with putting new blinds in my workshed that completely changed the light in there!

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  4. Jo, you may want to check to see if your monitor is calibrated correctly. My other line of work is professional photography and we calibrate our monitors constantly, and these photos are very dark on my monitor. You may have the brightness settings too high on your monitor which makes them look good to you but actually they are very dark. It could be an easy fix. You're recent photos the past few posts are showing very dark compared to your previous work. I would check your monitor settings or if you are working in PS check the levels on your photo. If the photo's graph is weighted to the dark end you need to lighten it (a lot of camera's have graph settings as well). If you have any other questions, please let me know.

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