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Sunday, February 11th, 2024
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A macro image of a costume jewelry necklace on top of a woven jewelry box. The original high-resolution image is available from us here!
Tuesday, February 6th, 2024
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Costume jewelry necklace on a pure white background. The high-resolution original image is available from us here .
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
I was once asked about the hardest thing I ever photographed. Of course there have been several difficult things to shoot, but as a commercial photographer, some product and catalog shoots and reflective objects just jump out. Reflecting on a number I have done, I think they have gotten a bit easier for me with time, either because of experience, or the ability to use digital retouching and enhancement techniques, or both. To say that there are no more challenges would be a misstatement, however.
My first bout with reflective product shots came during the era of film, long before digital capture or scanning was even possible. Digital retouching was a pipe dream for the future. I was asked to photograph jewelry with a large-format view camera (a 4X5) on transparencies. We opted to use our then-considered-powerful 1200 watt-second Balcar studio strobe set for lighting.
The jewelry pieces were white metal (silver, I think) and included rings, earrings, and a necklace. All pieces were to be shot in one image, laid out on a blue fabric. I was to capture highlights from the reflecting white umbrellas mounted on the strobes in each piece of jewelry in the layout.
In those days, we were located just south of Hollywood, California, and there were many film labs nearby, so film processing turnover was fairly fast – three hours on a non-rush basis. We had 4X5 Polaroid self- processing black and white positives that could be shot with the 4X5 camera that we could see as proofs prior to shooting the transparencies which needed processing at a lab.
The Polaroids were over a dollar each, in those days – a big, but necessary expense. For this shoot, we went through something like ten of them, just trying to position the irregularly-shaped jewelry, so it would show certain highlights. Each time we shot one, we would find one piece that would go dark, with no highlight. It would have no sparkle, it would look, well . . . black! We finally got what looked like a good Polaroid, put in the transparency film holders and shot four transparencies of the same shot (one for us, one for the client, and two for insurance in case we needed to lighten or darken the exposure by chemical process). We ran it to the lab up the road, and three hours later went over there to see our new transparencies. One of the pieces of jewelry had moved slightly and it went dark. There went a bunch of money, and a lot of time. It took until the next day before we got it right. It was a good experience, and I learned a lot. I managed to find the image in our archives. See it below.
– Gary Silverstein
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