Remez Ramblings

Yesterday I had a jewelry shoot. I quite enjoy shooting jewlery - in the past I’ve only shot against black (velvet is a must as it sucks in all the light, and doesn’t give reflections, even under really strong direct lighting.

I shot most of the pieces in a lightbox, which was well constructed, but unfortunately, the interior wasn’t white enough. The ring in the image was shot on Tesco Value printer paper, which was whiter!

Now, it’s not a massive job to burn out the background in the other shots, but it’s a lot more manual than it should be, which means more time, which means a higher charge. The lightbox was supplied by the client, and if I do much more work like this, then it may be something I’ll invest in, but then I’ll need to pass on the cost somehow to future clients, to cover my costs.

Still, I enjoyed the shoot, there’s something quite calming about shooting jewelry - it’s not as unpredictable as shooting people, but it is nice to take one or two shots per piece, knowing I’ll get 90% or more great shots.

Edit: 5 minutes adjusting the Tone Curve in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (my new workflow tool of choice) seems to have got the lightbox shots close enough to full white, without losing detail from the jewelry itself.

As an inhabitant of various photography and camera gear communities, there is a lot of snobbishness about the cameras built into mobile phones. At the time I took this photo, I had my EOS 20D SLR with me, but I chose to shoot it on my phone (Sony Ericsson K800i).

Why?

Because I was busy, on my way, and just wanted to grab a quick shot to remember how blue the sky was, and how dramatic it looked. Sure it would have been nice with a decent lens, and a polarising filter to make the most of it, but I wasn’t interested in all the fine detail, it was the scene I wanted to remember.

The quality of the photos from the K800i are really quite astounding. Only 4 or 5 years ago they would have matched all but the most expensive digital compact cameras. I can see that in the next few years, the digital compact camera market will be massively eroded as people will not need to buy a separate camera.

The prosumer, and digital SLR market is flourishing, and I hope will continue to flourish, having phones which take such great photos will ultimately help, and drive the growth of the higher end kit, as it will encourage more and more people to take more photos, and spark their interest, and inspiration.