How To Photograph Jewelry

Want your jewelry look fabulous on photos but you’re amateur in jewelry photography? We’ve gathered the basic photo tips for you to make beautiful photos for catalogues and online shops.

Choosing background

Dealing with jewelry, you have to convey every detail, its shape, and brilliance. The first thing you should take into account is the background. In general, you can try to experiment with different backgrounds such as white, black, colored, or even some creative, textured ones. But let us consider first, how to photograph jewelry on white background because it is the most traditional way to achieve great results of jewellery photos. Even Amazon accepts only white background for their product photography. To take such photos you can use some stands or a jewelry photography kit. It would be better if use a stand of a black color, as it will be easier to remove in Photoshop and achieve a pure white background through jewelry photo editing. Click here to see the before and after examples.

By the way, do not forget about the jewelry photography props, as they can become a great complement to the picture. For example, if you are interested in how to photograph earrings to draw interest and attract the clients, here you have a couple of ways. You can put the earrings on the acrylic stand with two holes, or in another case, just put them on a textured background. Be careful with mirror surfaces and clear it from dirty and dust before shooting.

Jewelry photography lighting

How to photograph jewelry professionally without experience in professional product photography? Care about the lightning, namely, a light box. It will help you disperse and soften the light, and as a result, achieve quality photo. If you want a cheaper variant, buy a few LED lamps. These lamps will provide you with an appropriate white light, and what is the most important, they will not change the color of the jewelry.

There are a lot of jewellery photography ideas about how to play with the light. To take a quality and bright photo, you should place the jewelry on a firm surface and put the construction between large studio lights. The other way to achieve unusual and catching photo is to put the jewelry on a mirror, or some other reflecting surface, like a tile, so that it will create an attractive reflection that will definitely attract the customers. Do not be afraid to play with shadows too, but of course only in that case, when it is not out of place and it may create an interesting photo.

How to photograph jewelry with iPhone

There is no substitute for a good DSLR camera in the process of shooting, but still, if you do not have any, do not worry and use your smartphone. Does it sound unusual to you? Present-day smartphones are quality and quite powerful to utilize them in similar photo shooting.

Do not think that you can just take your iPhone and photograph. Even in this case you need some equipment to enhance the quality of the pictures. First of all, think about your phone camera. We can recommend you the new models of iPhones, such as iPhone X and IPhone 7 Plus, as they have an advantage due to their dual camera. IPhone 6s will also be good as well. If you plan just to post your photos in Instagram and not print them, the earlier iPhones with their 8-megapixel camera will work well for you too.

Speaking about image stabilization, remember that only built-in software will not be enough to prevent the shake of a camera if you hold the phone in your hands. To avoid getting the blurry photos, there is a great solution – the tripod for iPhone. There are many suitable tripods for the iPhones, so you will not have problems with it, they are about $50-100.

The next point is the phone lenses. If you have never used any lenses for your phone, you will undoubtedly understand how convenient and useful they are. They will help you to focus on the jewelry, to take a macro shot and in general to paint the jewelry in a very flattering light.

How to photograph jewelry for ETSY

If you have to take the photos of your hand-made jewelry, think about selling them on ETSY. Remember, that it shouldn’t be a boring photo, but creative and amazing. To achieve such effect, we recommend you to follow the next tips:

1. Put the jewelry on a light gloss, or on a ceramic matte tile.

2. Experiment with 360 rotation shooting.

3. Play with interesting shadows as a background. The shadow as a lace will look especially elegant.

4. Use a piece of cloth for decoration. It is desirable for the cloth not to melt into the background. The black silk would be the perfect choice, as it would express all the delicacy of the object.

5. Address photo editing services to create drops of water. More info read here.

6. Put the jewelry on a grainy surface, like sand. By the way, the jewelry photos against the sand and the sea look very romantic.

7. Take the photo of some types of jewelry. Try to combine them in a beautiful way and focus the attention on all of them.

8. If you need to hand the earring, for example, try to use thread or the fishing line. In such case, the line will not be clearly visible, and the earring will attract all the attention.

9. If you are interested how to photograph jewelry for Instagram, think about composition consisting of jewelry and food. Sounds unusual and interesting, does not it? That is the right choice for Instagram.

If you dreamed of being involved in the jewelry business, but you weren’t sure how to photograph jewelry in an appropriate way, do not be afraid to start right now! You can use our recommendations with confidence and create astonishing photos of your jewelry that will not only attract customers but also dazzle them.