Advanced Jewelry Photography
How to take pictures of jewelry on black acrylic or glass

• Lighting & Set-up for jewelry photography
  
• Working with black acrylic or glass
• Creating the "halo" effect or "bright spot"

• Working with an "open set"
  
• Jewelry photography Part I
  
• Jewelry Photography tools for shooting on "black ice"

The technique shown here requires the use of some very specific items to have success. We will list the equipment used as we go along, and a complete list can be found at the end of this document. This technique uses an "open photographic set" which does not require the use of a light tent, such as the EZcube. We will be using a softbox and diffusion paper to soften the lighting instead.

A small 5" reflector diffused by a sheet of translucent mylar creates a beautiful soft halo around the necklace focal point.

It requires a great deal of patience to correctly line up the halo, produced by the lights 5" reflector, exactly where you would intend it to be.

The "halo" or "bright spot" is created by positioning a light with a 5" reflector, behind a diffusion panel made of a white translucent mylar material. This small light is placed on the opposite side of the table from the camera, and on the backside of the jewelry. You will not be able to tell if the halo is in the right spot unless you look through the camera lens. Contrary to what you may think, this light does not need to be pointed downward.

Raising or lowering the light stand will move the halo location toward the camera or away. The position of the light shown in these examples is the setup that produced these photos.

The primary light source for the necklace shown, was positioned on the side of the table, facing downward toward the jewelry and table surface. A single soft box was used to soften the primary light source and prevent glare and hotspots on the surface of the crystals. We used one single 20" x 20" Kuhl Lite 120 soft box for this. This light holds four 30 Watt compact flourescent bulbs, putting out a substantial amount of light, which allows you to shoot with your camera set to a faster shutter speed.

The large acrylic sheet used, has a protective sheet on both sides; we highly recommend leaving the second side covered with the protective sheeting until you intend to use it. The acrylic does scratch easily, so dragging jewelry across the surface is to be avoided when at all possible. Glass is more durable and can be used instead of acrylic; however it is more hazardous to work with due to the fragile nature of glass.

This technique works especially well for jewelry that lies flat like the necklace shown. Because this is an open set and the black acrylic is highly reflective, it will take some patience to line things up just right so the acrylic is not reflecting things you do not wish to see in your image. If you have the opportunity to work in an area with high ceilings, that helps to reduce the overhead reflections a bit. Be sure to keep looking through the camera lens after repositioning any part of the setup. Unwanted reflections have a way of sneaking in just when you think you're all set.

Be sure that all of your lights match in color or you will not be happy with the results. NEVER mix different light source bulb colors. I use all 5000K daylight balanced bulbs for all of my example images.