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!

Getting organised

That's what I feel I've been doing this week! I'm teaching quite a bit this month, both privately at home (including tomorrow!) and at college, so I've been sorting out the workshed after the pre-Christmas, making lots of last minute orders, rush. It definitely needed a good tidy, but I've also taken the opportunity to do a couple of jobs that I've wanted to do for a while, including putting together a new photography set up.
 

Not the most exciting photo I've ever shown you!

 For the last few years I've been using a table top photo tent that I wrote about here. I've been wanting to change it for a while though as it's not big enough to take decent photos of long necklaces, and the backgrounds I've made for it get creased really easily. Putting up the new roller blinds in the window of the workshed gave me the idea of using one to take photos on, and I finally got it set up this week. It's not really anything fancy, I've just fixed the blind to the wall above the table, but it draps really well, it's not going to get creased (I hope!), I can roll it up out of the way when I need to and I love the texture of the material. I still need to perfect the lighting for it though as the lights I've been using seem a bit dark for it. I can turn up the exposure on my camera to compensate for that, but as I hold my camera rather than use a tripod so that I can get the angles I prefer turning up the exposure can result in some rather shaky photos!

Blackberry Earrings

 The first piece of jewellery I took photos of using it was the pair of earrings above. They're my first pair of earrings for the Art Jewelry Elements Earrings Challenge - we're challenging you to create a pair of earrings a week during 2013, making sure that each pair includes art beads or art components. The challenge is broken down into 13 week sections, so you can just do part of the year if you wish. You can find the full details of the challenge here, and if you'd like to see how I made these earrings head over to the AJE blog for a step-by-step tutorial. And if you really like the earrings you can find them here!

Tutorial Tuesday - photography light diffuser & photography tips

I've been meaning to write a blog post about taking jewellery photos for ages, but I've found a post on Boo's blog that covers a lot of what I was going to write about and a lot more besides.

My photos have improved dramatically over the last couple of years. I mean, just compare this photo
to this one!

I spent hours and hours experimenting with different lights and set ups, and now use a light studio like this
with a brown cloth hanging from the top of the back so that it sweeps down and covers the back and the bottom of the light studio without there being a distinctive line where the back and bottom meet - I will edit this post tomorrow when B has gone back to school with a photo of my set up!

My tips for photographing jewellery are:

• make sure that your camera has a good macro setting. I use a simple compact digital camera, a Sony 1080 cybershot if you're interested. I took some jewellery up to Jessops and the assistant and I spent ages comparing the macros on different cameras! The macro setting is usually symbolised by a flower, and it will allow you to get in close with clear definition.

• use the white balance/iso setting on your camera. This was something that I didn't really know about until this summer when a fantastic photography tutor came in to talk to my advanced college class and show them (and me!) how to make the best use of their camera. It is amazing the difference just changing the light balance on your camera will make, even just choosing one of the automatic settings your camera is programmed with. Before I knew about this tip I thought I could only take photos either in diffused sunlight (my favourite in the summer is early morning or late afternoon sun, taken under the awning over our decking i.e. beautifully clear light, but diffused) or in complete darkness other than my daylight bulbs in the photo studio. Well, the photo below isn't my best ever, but would you believe that it was taken with the jewellery on top of my bag, under the harsh class room lights during my advanced class a couple of weeks ago?! I promise it hasn't been edited apart from cropping and then resizing so that it would load up quicker.

The ring, by the way, was made by one of my talented students. Beautiful, isn't it?

• Think carefully about your background. I chose to use brown as my background as the jewellery shows up well and it's my main 'business' colour. It (and my props) are nice and warm compared to the colder colour of the silver. The wooden props that I use carry a theme through all my photos, and I also like that they have meaning for me. T turned the wooden bowl and cup that I use, and the wooden box contains a came of mancala that my brother brought back from his travels. Have a look at what other people use as backgrounds and props. Remember that you want a theme so that people recognise your photos and so that your website/etsy page etc doesn't look messy, but that doesn't mean that you have to use the same props and colours all the time.
  

• Take lots of photos from lots of different angles. This is for two reasons: firstly, you want lots of photos so that you can choose the best ones. Secondly, if you are selling jewellery on a website people can't touch it, feel it (obvious, I know) so you have to show it to them as clearly as possible.

I could go on, but I'd only be repeating what Boo has written. She's got more than just the tutorial that I'm linking to here - make sure that you follow the links on the right hand side of her blog to see some more tutorials. The tutorial that you will see if you follow this link is about building and adapting your own photo studio for free! I can't believe how versatile it is, and if I can find the time (any one invented that cloning machine yet?!) I will be making my own as it looks more compact and more versatile than my bought one. Make sure that you have a good look at the 'very rough diagram' that Boo has included - it puts my best artwork to shame!