Most of the time, I’m shooting in spaces with either ample natural light (weddings) or in spaces where there’s absolutely no light (esports). These days, I’m primarily a Maryland/Baltimore wedding photographer, but that wasn’t always the case! There was a period in time when I worked as the in-house photographer for a jewelry/fashion “company.” If you’re curious about that, I wrote a bit more about it in my Top 31 - Week 1 post!
Working in the studio is obviously very different from shooting in natural light. The newfound control of being able to manipulate light to your exact taste, texture, strength can be rather daunting but like all things, practice makes…..something good-ish.
The easiest thing about working with products and jewelry in this kind of style is that the pieces themselves don’t need to take any breaks. You stand them up with a bit of wax and they’ll just sit there until you’re done! The hardest thing about working with jewelry is that they won’t help you work. Getting a necklace to fall in the perfect way, or getting stubborn earrings to stand up can be one of the most frustrating things in the world.
The two best things I’ve learned are as follows:
A) Perish the thought of “I’ll fix it in post.”
Because 1. you’ll come across the problem area in your selects 2. you won’t want to fix it in post but you’ll have to 3. you might have 15 different photos all with the same problem, which may or may not even be easily fixable in Photoshop.
B) Sometimes, less is more.
Jewelry is shiny sometimes. And sometimes, shiny things will catch light in awkward ways. For all my planning and efforts to optimize a shooting space to catch, bounce, and retain as much light as possible, sometimes the best lighting setups I’ve created for pieces were simple 1 light + 1 reflector setups. Using flags to block off certain angles have saved me hours of reflection removal in photoshop. All light can be good light, but sometimes less light is better than more light.
The majority of these photos were taken on a Canon 6D Mark ii, paired with either the Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro or the Canon 24-70 f/2.8L. Lighting was a mix of a Profoto B1X + 51” umbrella or twin Canon speedlites, all within a custom white 40” v-flat setup I made to bounce light.
There’s an entire world of product photography that I would love to get more involved in but just for now, this is what I’ve got.
I can’t tell you where to find these pieces but I can tell you how* to reach out to me if you’re interested in working together :)
