Jewellery Studio

This is the second lot of photographs I took of the jewellery, this time in the studio instead of with natural lighting. I used one light placed to the right with a soft box, turned right down to softly light the subjects whilst creating small and subtle shadows. I like the simplicity of the photographs, the plain white background doesn't draw focus, so the viewer instantly looks at the subject instead of the background, which I think may of been a problem with the cupcake background. 

Also, I used a macro lens for these shots instead of a standard 18-55mm f5.6, which allowed me to get a lot closer to the subjects. Getting closer in stopped the problem of getting the background and the edge of the mat in the frame.

This is one of my favourite shots from the set, mainly because of the large aperture used, it instantly draws focus the the cake at the front. 

I like the shallow depth of field used in the photographs, it draws focus to specific parts of the jewellery, but you can still tell what the pieces are in the background. 

Having the subjects slightly off centre is a point to the photographs that I really like, it's not very formally composed, which gives you a lot more room to work. 

I think the lighting looks best in the following shots. They're softly lit, whilst having subtle shadows to really highlight the details in the pieces, which can be seen more in the following photographs.

Having the black background in the shot in these photographs seemed like the best thing to do, because it split the photograph up, the light on the bottle almost blended into the background in the shots that were completely white, so having that darkness in the frame made the bottle stand out from the background a lot more.

Focusing closer to the centre rather than on the foreground was a part of the photographs I really liked, again because it wasn't formally composed. The positioning of the pieces were a key part of the shot, shooting in a straight line would of been too boring, so going diagonal made the photographs better in my opinion.

I reshot a few more of the pieces of jewellery, using different angles and focussing closely on the foreground. I prefer some of these, mainly because of the composition and lighting, they're all shot in similar ways to before, but positioned so that more of the subject is in focus. 

I like the ribbon being out of focus, it almost looks like smoke because it's that blurry, you can't tell what it is in most of the photographs.

I like the contrast in the pink, because of the light only being on one side, a smooth gradient of shadow has been made which really highlights the colour and detail in the subject.

Focusing on objects in the background rather than the foreground seemed like an interesting approach, the massively shallow depth of field meant that all of the foreground was blurred, instantly drawing attention to the subject rather than anything else.

The more detailed pieces turned out better in my opinion, mainly because more shadows were created, which really exaggerated the definition in the subjects.