310 - Jewellery shoot

I had this brief chosen as I had not carried out this type of work before, and found it to be a challenge and different at the the same time. My initial thought was how as I to carry out this task, so I set out to plan it. First of all I needed to source the jewellery from the client, to match the other half of my brief. Once I had sourced my items I then started to put together a plan. I investigated how to go about this and decided to use a light table with flash lighting, and use the studio, which I subsequently booked. I then refered to my crib sheet (see earlier blog for general crib sheet). Once I had the items and studio I then went about photographing them, both in the studio and at my home studio.
Noted is the estimate for this shoot.

Estimate for Jewellery shoot.

Qty	Description	Rate £	Total £
	Fee for Miriad studio to produce 10 images of selected Jewellery . To be shot on 2 days in a studio, to be licensed as per the agreed contract.	2000.00	2000.00
1	Hire of studio for 1 day	250.00	250.00
1	Hire of additional studio lighting	150.00	150.00
2	Assistant	150.00	300.00
2	Cleaning materials etc	50.00	100.00
3	Post production for 3 days	150.00	450.00
	Cost of picture clipping	50.00	50.00
	Costs of home studio	100.00	100.00
	Additional lighting hire	100.00	100.00
	Other post production costs including printing	100.00	100.00
		Total £	£3600.00

Here are my initial images from my Jewellery shoot, from which I will choose 10. There is a variety of pieces, borrowed form several good trusting ladies, all taken on a light table or light box, but there is another alternative, not used, is what is known as a light cube. The light cube has diffused light (lit from outside the cover), not direct light as I have used for my images. These are the 3 main methods of producing images for this type of product, and they can and do vary by manufacturer, in size and other details.

I have used a variety of styles as well, as personally I do not like the stark bland lighting that is used generally for this type of photography. However I have included for this option. I will now select from these my final 10 images. Further below I have included some images that I have seen and been interested in, but when I came to do my own I changed the images that I had in my mind to suit the material I had and to show the different ways that jewellery can be shown. Each type of image will reflect on how the brief appears and is required, and to the use the image is to be put to.

The images below were taken in the college studio on a light table, with varying lighting and f stops to record the image. One of the main issues I had with using the light table at college was that the surface of the table was very damaged and scratched, which meant that quite alot of post production work had to be done to sort this out. It would not have been to much of a problem(apart from a professional point of view) if the image had been due to be sent for what is known as picture clipping, as the image would then be isolated from the background. For my home studio I used a light box, but this was only powered by a small set of bulbs. it is meant to view slides and suchlike but did allow me to produce some acceptable images.
The use of my 50mm lens has produced some very good images including allowing me to adjust better for the depth of field given the size of the apertures used. When using my home studio I used my 24 to 105mm lens so as to be able to get a little closer to my subject given the small area to work with, and I found it easier to use in this situation, and I got the right results. I have now ordered my own light table so that I can continue with this type of work.

The images below are for discussion and have little or no work done to the image, except to change them to JPG from RAW. This is the initial sort of some of the images I took.
In all cases each image was taken with a Canon 5D MKII.

f5.6-1/125-ISO=100-50mm lens-AWB

This was the first image I took and I like the lighting on this rather than plain white background.

f5.6-1/125-ISO=100-50mm lens-AWB  but with lighting adjusted

I have changed the lighting and this does give a different view of the necklace. The above is a better representation of the necklace from my point of view. But this view does have merit for display purposes and it is down to personal preference. 

f5.6-1/125-ISO=100-50mm lens-AWB

This is a different necklace with the same lighting as above.

f5.6-1/125-ISO=100-50mm lens-AWB

A slightly more subtle lighting was used for this watch image to cope with the reflections.

f5.6-1/125-ISO=100-50mm lens-AWB

using 2 watches as a pair.

f10-1/125-ISO=100-50mm lens-AWB

Separate watch.

f10-1/125-ISO=100-50mm lens-AWB

th other separate watch

f10-1/125-ISO=100-50mm lens-AWB

a necklace with the same lighting along with a bracelet

f10-1/125-ISO=100-50mm lens-AWB

A slightly different type of necklace with a slightly brighter lighting

The lighting here was quite bright as I was trying to aviod much post production.

f5.6-1/125-ISO=100-50mm lens-AWB

these are ideal for picture clipping exercise.

The following images were taken using a small light box and stand alone flash units in my home studio - the dining room table.

f14-1/160-ISO=400-105mm lens-AWB

These hand images are an experiment to see how the items look.

f13-1/160-ISO=400-65mm lens-AWB

f18-1/160-ISO=400-105mm lens-AWB

f14-1/160-ISO=400-105mm lens-AWB

These are 2 images of the same brooch, but showing the back and front.

f18-1/160-ISO=400-105mm lens-AWB

f13-1/160-ISO=400-105mm lens-AWB

Below are sample images I have seen that have given me some idea of how to present and meet the brief, with different lighting styles and presentation methods.

There is evidence here that this image has been clipped so as to make it available for many different uses in advertising.

This image may have been "produced" a clipped image on a different background and a reflection added.

This may have been taken on alit background as the shadow is quite subtle, as are some on my images above.

Difficult to work out if this is a "produced" image

this shows several varieties of how to present the product.

This is another way to present the item, but can only be used in this one context. Unless the item is to be clipped as well.

With jewellery the image can be used in many forms and in many types of advertising, and therefore there is a system for isolating the image from the background that it has been upon. This is called picture clipping, which is a technique used to draw around the image. This is usually done over the Internet by a specialist firm, as it is quite an involved job. Below is an illustration of this technique.
Generally Jewellery is photographed on a plain background and shot for multiple use, as the article can then be used in a variety of ways, eg in magazines, on a web site, on a poster, and be placed on a large selection of backgrounds, as the client wants.

I visited the V&A recently and I show below some images of Jewellery that I saw, and the way that they display them.All the images are as shot with no adjustment except to reduce the size and change to jpg.

This jewellery is displayed in the new section of the V&A, and is very impressive in it's layout. The lighting is very subdued and each article is individually lit, but contained in a glass case.

This is a splendid glass necklace dispayed in the same area. This was photographed in a glass case.

This is part of a display of modern Jewellery in a seperate part to the new gallery. It is a modern piece and I have included the disply images as well, but all behind glass

This is in the same section as above and shows another necklace, with a photograph showing how it is worn, incase you are unsure!

This is a bracelet, based on the same comments as above.

These are shots of the display cases showing the way the items are displayed in the shop.

There will be a separate item to explain the final 10 images and how I came to the conclusions that I have come to.

Unit 310 - workflow for Jewellery -to be continued.

Workflow for Jewellery shoot.

This is the 2nd part of my brief, to produce images to include in a catalogue of jewellery.

My first thought was to how to accomplish this, and where. I decided that the best place to do this would be in the college studio, as I do not have the full facilities at home.

I then visited the studio to work out how I was going to do achieve this, and decided to use the light table instead of a light cube. This would give me more latitude to photograph the jewellery. I had previously used a lighting cube to do a product shoot, but found that I could be more flexible without it.

I then decided how to light the jewellery. This would be using a variety of the studio lights, and once set I could reuse the set up with minor alterations, depending on the piece of jewellery.

My next step was to source the jewellery that I was going to photograph. I acquired several pieces of jewellery, and set about planning how I was to produce images for this.

I then booked a date for the studio. I then photographed a variety of items.
Below is an image of the set up I used.

The light table was set up and the lighting is as follows:-
Softbox reflecting light off the floor to the underside of the table --GM500R set to power level 1 and 1 tenth.
Softbox set at 45 degrees at the front -- GM500 set to power level 1
Snoot with honeycomb set at low to opposite side of softbox -- Esprit 500 set to power level 1/32nd.
The camera was both hand held and also for most of the shots mounted on a movable stand.

Adjustments were made mainly to the aperture on the the camera to achieve the correct exposure when imaging the different items of jewellery, whilst leaving the lighting generally as noted. There were occasions when I did adjust the lighting slightly, either changing the power level or by slight movements of the lighting.

Post production was done in the same manner as the Emma shoot, downloading to a seperate folder, editing and deleting unacceptable images, choosing a selection, then editing the final choice of images.

I have included also here an example of some post production work that I have done on one of my images of the cuff links. This would be typical in the case of jewellery photography ( apart from the picture clipping)as at times it is impossible to not show some lighting/feature that is not required int the image.

The first image is prior to the post production. It shows an obvious streak of light, and the photographer is shown to the left, as a pink line,and as a reflection, with some bright spots. the second image shows some adjustments made to to take out some unwanted reflections and a line of light. Please note that the image is zoomed in to over 200% of the the original.

Also shown below are some grab shots of my workflow to show how I get to my final print.

This shows my intial crop of the actual image. No point in altering the image if you are going to crop later.

This image shows the initial printing page for my Epson

 R220 printer at home. it shows the printer, page set up button and allows you to scale to fit media. it also allows you to adjust the colour management for the print.

this screen allows you to cahnge the quality and various other parameters, such as Best photo print eg 

Once you have pressed print then this progress screen appears. It also shows the ink levels, and should be checked each time to ensure you have enough ink prior to printing.

this is a sreen capture of another item.

See later blogs for images produced and comments.

unit 310- workflow

Workflow for Emma shoot

Once the brief had been given and discussed then it was time to put the wheels in motion to obtain the result. This started with several ideas and phone calls to establish the requirements. What was needed was a model, a car, a location and the equipment.

Emma was contacted and the shoot details were explained and the date suggested, and the location would be advised as soon as it was agreed. I contacted the cars owner and went to see him to discuss the arrangements. He also suggested that I use the location there, which made a practical solution as the car/s would be available all day. A date was set at this point, and was then communicated to Emma, who was available that day.

 I did visit subsequently to prepare for the shoot. In the mean time I obtained some lighting (borrowed from the college, along with an external battery pack), so that I had a choice and did not have to rely on small flash units, or completely on natural light. I had planned to use natural light as best but the additional lighting was part of my backup.

As the shoot was going to be on location, I had to come up with an alternative plan, but I did not have to use it. The alternative would have been to reschedule another day if necessary.

Prior to meeting the owner of the cars, my assistant and I went exploring to seek out some locations. However, once I had agreed the location with the owner of the cars, we went to explore the area to sort out where we could photograph. Once we had done we set up the lights we had borrowed local to the college to understand how they worked and could be used.

Confirmation phone calls were made to confirm the day and set up, and the day turned out to be cool and sunny.

Once the shoot was concluded, everything was packed away and returned from whence it came. The images were downloaded onto my PC and then copied to a separate hard drive as security. From there I deleted the obvious images that were not so good due to eyes being shut, too much highlight, out of focus etc. Then I started to put the images into a separate folder that I could use, and then post produced some of the images.

Below is series of images illustrating the above.

This was a location I thought would be quite good. It was part of the Sudbury Hall estate.

This is another angle that I tried, using the building as a backdrop to the car.

With the car in position it was time to introduce the model (my glamorous assistant), to see how the lighting worked, and how the background would work.

Trying to get some detail shots. 

An even closer detail. more lighting required. Time of day is going to have be thought about.

Detail within the car

This was the first visit to the location of the cars, and after talking to the owner about using his location,

and I thought this might be a good position for the day.

This was the view at the end of the short gravel drive, which I contemplated I might be able to use.

This is the view of the gravel drive, and the trees have still got foliage on, so I can use the shade.

This is the trail to set up the lights, and to make sure they work.

setting up the lights

Detail of the battery pack.

starting to set up the lights.

a 2 light set up

The final result. I now know how the lights work

After setting about the lighting I went back to the location and this was one setup I tried.

This was another set up.

I did note that I had be careful with the reflections on the car body from the lights..

Have to try to elimate distracting reflections.

Using both sunlight and lighting. Underexposed for the background.

Just for fun noted the reflections in the car.

Using software I created a folder for all the images taken. Copied to a seperate hard drive as well. This is shown in Photoshop Bridge.

This is shown within the folder of the images, within Bridge again.

I then choose a selection of images and placed them into another folder for post production.

This is one image that I have post produced. All I have done here is crop the image to the size that require. I have taken note of the image I need when taking the initial image.