Take "nice" photos of jewellery is very useful to everyone works in this market, but it's so difficult to get good results!

By those articles we would give you some simple and practical advices to start or enhance your experience about jewel photography.

The first question we have to ask ourselves is "What's the purpose of our jewel photos":

1) for us, in order to remember and to reconstruct the object (documentation purpose)

2) for others, to make them like our jewels, probably to be purchased (commercial purpose)

Therefore, as the purposes are different, different also are the photographic techniques.

These photos for the company's archive are used to recognise and realise the jewel, showing dimensions, shapes, details and intermediate working phases (even defects or problems).

Fig.1 rings photographed from 30cm (perspective error max 5%) by a Canon S2IS, focal 210mm equiv., mounted on a photo studio Gem Photo Lux FourPro including additional macro optics FourPro OM2L1G330, lighting system and camera support

To avoid dimensional errors, they should be taken like ortho views (front, side, top view), possibly over a millimetre scaled reticule as background. To minimise the prospective error, it is necessary to take the photo as far as possible, using tele-macrophotography techniques.

The perspective errors exclude the possibility to use the "macro function" included in the cameras with zoom, than instead it uses the shortest zoom focal (wide angle) at a very close distance: i.e. a ring should be photographed by the "macro function" at 2-3 cm distance, with strong prospective errors versus the background reticule that can arrive to 50-100% (ring is visibly distorted, appears like "pulled").

Remember that "macro function" comes for free with the camera, but is designed for the flowers and insects, that are not geometric subject!

Each of those ortho views (front, side, top view), shows very well one side, while the other two not at all, so they miss any perception of depth: for this reason they are incomplete and ugly.

We warmly suggest to avoid to show the "documentation photos" to customers: they are useful for you, but for their ugliness they would not convince a customer to buy that piece, while they would give many constructive information to possible "illegal copiers". Don't send document photo outside of your company!

The purpose of commercial photo is to show what can only be described by an image, that means answer to questions: "What is it?", "Is it well done?", "Do I like it?", leaving all the other information (dimensional size, weight, materials, construction details etc) in text descriptions.

FIRST QUESTION: "What is it?"

Answer to this question by an image, means to be able to recognise at first sight what kind of jewel it is: the photographer must avoid any view that can confuse the observer, i.e. a ring with a brooch or a chain pendant with an earring

To identify the jewel type, the photo must show the "characteristic shape" of each kind of jewel, so it is necessary to be able to change point of view, moving the camera or modifying the jewel position.

To be more precise, in the image must be visible the "characteristic element" of each kind of jewel, and they are:

- the ring's finger hole;

- the pendant chain hole (possibly with a chain inside that forms the typical "V");

- the earrings clip or pin or whatever else is used to fix them on the ears. Very useful to identify the earrings and to distinguish it from the chain pendants (often very similar) is to show them in couple, possibly in different angles.

For the biggest items, their "characteristic elements" is the shape that the human body gives them:

the bracelet, should be an elliptical shape being wound around the wrist;

the necklace must be shaped as an upside-down oval because it is wound around the neck on its superior part.

SECOND QUESTION: "Is it well done?"

The observer must be able to evaluate the design, the manufacture and the material qualities. The photo must be rich of details: colours and finishing of the surfaces stone transparencies etc. For this it's necessary to adopt tele macro techniques and pay a lot of attentions on the jewel's surfaces reflections, controlling the environment, the light types and directions. Take a look to the previous photos under this point of view.

Sometime the subject (necklace) is so big that you cannot see at the same time the whole object and its details. To solve this problem you have 2 possible solution:

1. print on the paper in big area, using the highest resolution of the camera during the photo capture;
2. shoot 2 pictures of the same item, one wide that take the whole subject, another that using the tele lens take just one (significant) detail of the subject: this is the only way to show these big items on the PC monitor or printed in small areas (i.e. multiple pictures in a catalogue page)

THIRD QUESTION: "Do I like it?"

The photographer must avoid everything that can worsen the picture or distract the attention (strange reflection or shadows, supports, glue drops, measurement scales) and select, among the infinite point of views and lighting situations, the complete view that better shows the design of that particular jewel.

Observing the previous and following jewel photos, you'll see that, generally, the preferred are that one with "the jewel like it's on the body", and asymmetrical compositions are better to the symmetrical, more banal.

Here as an example a straight bracelet (the producers and vendors often prefer this view, because they are used to see the bracelet in this way in the exhibitors):

while the final customer wears it (and she prefers to see it) closed around just the wrist, like the following:

Sometimes there are different possibilities to see the same object "worn on the body", because the part of the body that wears it (finger, wrist, neck) and the point of observation can be moved: the asymmetric compositions are, generally, better of symmetrical, the most banal ones.

As an example, here follows the two positions more common in order to observe the ring on a finger:

it gives one symmetrical photo (hand aligned to the face, wrist bent) or asymmetrical (hand aligned to the forearm, straight wrist): both are nice, and often the preference between one an other is given simply from the usual habits of observation, although there are also some "technical" reasons to prefer one or the other: the design of the ring (is it more important to show symmetries/asymmetries than the lateral side of the ring?) or stone size (if big, it can hide the finger hole in a symmetrical view).

Also the necklaces photo can be composed in various ways:

symmetrical (I wear the necklace in front of a mirror) and asymmetric (I watch somebody else who wears the necklace): also in this case the preference between a view and the other is simply given from our own observation habit.

The predominant light must be diffused from front in order to show the colour of the metal and diffused from back for stones (therefore diffused from every part, 360° all around), with some small spot of direct light that makes the jewels "sparkling", increasing their glamour.

To be able to apply all those principle, just a camera is not enought, but it is required a complete photo studio that, like the Gem Photo Lux FourPro® Jewelry Photo Studio, allows the right illumination of the jewel, support the camera allowing all the MOVEMENTS you need for photo (and video), and corrects the zoom of your camera to allow macro image focusing at every zoom focal

Thanks to 2 properties of those systems:

this eliminates the need of the supports, glue, wax, while the horizontal "no shadow" plane allow you to shape the jewel in whatever position and forms. NO TIME WASTED IN PHOTO EDITING ANYMORE!

(BY THE WAY: all the photos in this article have been made with the study Gem Photo Lux without supports for jewels and they have not been "cleaned" by photo editors)

The Gem Photo Lux Photo-Video studios are suitable for both photo documents and commercial photos, allows easily the 1:1 scale prints. It can be used also with the camcorders, to take videos with "point of view" movement and the tridimensional videoconference, the new opportunity for interactive on-line comunication among jeweller and customer.