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Aquamarine earrings and more photography
Okay, here’s with new lights:
No color tweaking, just lightening it a little. These bulbs are significantly better (30 watt and 5000K), the color is good, but I want a whiter background than this. Part of the problem is that these tabletop light stands are 17″ above the surface of the table. In previous light tent setups, I’ve had the lights directly against the side of the light tent — in this, the bulbs are 6″ above the tent, pointing diagonally downwards. I have the camera set to slower shutter speeds to brighten it further; I tried slower than this, but there was no significant difference.
I think I have a couple of options: to elevate the light tent (this is still my temporary one made of paper, until I make a new one), or to find new fixtures. I just bought these fixtures and I don’t know if others tabletop ones will be shorter. Here’s a picture of a single earring, except the light tent elevated nearly 6″, only lightening and no color tweaking:
A little less shadow under the earwire shows the lighting to be closer to what I want. Weird angle on the picture!
Raise the light tent another 5″ so the lights are coming in the side, again only lightening the photo:
And finally, taking the reflectors with their bulbs off the stands entirely, so the bulbs are as flush to the tent as I’ve done in the past:
Maybe this will be my solution. The simplest one is often the best. As far as the flash of the Swarovski (or not), I can fix this somewhat with earring, camera, and/or lighting angle in any of the setups. Same setup as above, just changing the angle:
I still would like a whiter background. These earrings are a good example of why selecting the background and cutting it away isn’t a good solution, as these light transparent beads are hard for the computer to differentiate from the background.
The earrings? Size 15s around a 9mm Cosmic Delta Aquamarine. These are flatbacks, so I used herringbone and peyote to make a back and basic bezel. Simple and pretty.
4 responses to “Aquamarine earrings and more photography”
Nice pics, Dulcey. I’m also working on eliminating as much shadow as possible. I haven’t found a good way to display earrings for picture taking. I don’t always like them flat.
Thanks, Arline! I think some soft shadow is fine so it doesn’t look so much like it’s floating in space, but yes, the lighting is the hardest part for me.
As far as earrings, if you have a light tent, you can rig hanging them with fishing line (and erase the line in your photo-editing software) – or do something like Little Bug Jewelry’s Etsy shop. She does a good job of photography. And jewelry!
I like all your results with your new lights.
I thought you wanted the floating in space effect which one of the original how to photograph glass beads site was doing. I like that look a lot.
Very pretty earrings too.
Thanks!
If I cut away the background with a dark shadow because of poorer lighting, it looks too abrupt between the shadow and the white, I think. It’s a better look if the shadow is less, with or without a cutaway background. I will still likely cut away the background.
And with these earrings, it’s a bear to cut out the background with the light, transparent beads. So I need an alternative, too!