Jewelry photography is often difficult to navigate unless you have been photographing jewelry for years. You need to ensure the lighting is perfect; there are no unnecessary reflections, unwanted props, or dirt in the frame. Jewelry photography involves photographing the product’s intricate details. Hence, you must ensure that your product setup and lighting angle are perfect and in sync.
Setting up your jewelry shoot is crucial to ensure the rest of your shoot goes well. Today we discuss the best way to frame jewelry photos and how you can enhance these photos regardless of the marketplace you are selling on.
Jewelry photography can, more often than not, be overwhelming. While your end goal is to create a picture that will stand out from your competitors and get you conversion, let’s take this one step at a time.
Let’s start with arranging a few accessories to start.
Following are a few accessories you’ll need to have in place before you begin your Jewelry photos.
1. Choose a good camera
Choosing a good DSLR is necessary for a jewelry photoshoot. Your camera should be able to capture finer details about your jewelry and bring out the essence of your product well. Hence, choosing a good camera is a prerequisite for jewelry photography.
New sellers who wish to wait to invest in a professional camera right away can use their smartphones to take professional photos. As the business scales up, they can invest in professional cameras like Canon 5D Mk IV for more professional-looking, high-resolution, sharper images. Companies can invest in this camera if they are looking for several lens options.
2. Lighting
Good lighting is the backbone of jewelry photography. If you have several jewelry photoshoots simultaneously, it’s best if you invest in a lightbox. It will help you in the long run. Investing in a lightbox will also save you the time and resources to arrange another background.
Moreover, editing and cleaning up images and trying different backgrounds will be much easier if you use a lightbox to photograph your jewelry.
Another best option would be to use natural lighting. If you plan to use natural light for your jewelry photoshoot, you do not have to invest in any other form of lighting. If you are shooting indoors, you can set up your jewelry next to a window with direct sunlight access. Note that the golden hours of the day (sunrise and sunset) are the most suitable times to get the best lighting.
3. Jewelry
Decide beforehand on your hero products. This will save you time selecting jewelry at the time of the photoshoot. At the same time, ensure you are selective of the jewelry you choose. Your jewelry should be clean and polished. You can consider polishing your jewelry before the shoot. Also, ensure you use a glove to handle jewelry to avoid getting fingerprints all over it.
To ensure high-quality images, select shiny and well-polished jewelry and avoid poor-quality photos in the final results.
4. Models and Mannequins
While it is not mandatory to use models or mannequins in your photoshoot, if you are a brand looking to add some human touch to your images, this point is for you.
Images are often more powerful when a human touch is added to them.These pictures are also better performing compared to a basic product image. Having humans in your picture adds emotional impact and gives the audience a sense of connectedness. Moreover, adding human elements to your photos can increase conversions by 95%.
5. Tripod
A tripod will help you get clear and steady images. When it comes to jewelry photoshoots, you need to be particular about getting a clear shot.
6. Use props
As long as you choose them wisely.
Choose props that will complement your jewelry photography. You can play around with different colored props to help the jewelry pop out in the frame.
Some props you can use include crystals, pebbles, flowers, black sand, etc.
7. The Background
Most jewelry brands either have a white or black background. However, your businesses can go for more than these two backgrounds. If you photograph jewelry for your website, feel free to play with different backgrounds. Grey, satin, bokeh, wood, and black sand are some of the many backgrounds for jewelry photography you can play around with.
See what works best for your brand and maintain consistency in the product image.
Remember that the jewelry is the star of the show.
Ensure the jewelry gets complete attention. This comes down to how well you’ve set up your props, their positioning, color codes, etc. Your props should complement your product and not steal the show.
Pinterest and Instagram are excellent platforms for jewelry photography inspiration. Create mood boards to help you envision how you want your photo shoot to turn out.
If you are new at this, stick to minimal props to make the most of your photoshoot. You can experiment as you like going forward.
Jewelry photography is all about the details.
Unlike a physical retail store, your customers will not get to hold the jewelry to make a buying decision. As a seller, you must make the task easier for them. Take close-up shots of your jewelry from different angles. If the jewelry has unique stones or jewels, capture it.
Take separate shots of different parts of the jewelry. Not only will this help your customers make a better purchase decision, but this will help build your customer’s trust in you.
Excellent lighting lets you tell the story your way.
As discussed above, a lightbox is a good investment if you have several product photoshoots. LED lights are an excellent option for jewelry photography.
Whether you choose to go with a natural or artificial source for lighting, we recommend that you stick to one source.
Refrain from mixing two different types of lighting as it will not fully help you make the most of either lighting and will also create other shadows, thus affecting the quality of the images during post-production.
Don’t enable flash when you are photographing jewelry. Enabling flash can hinder capturing the authentic charm of the jewelry. As mentioned above, find the right balance when photographing these delicate objects.
For luxury products like jewelry, you want to ensure minimal distraction. To be on the safer side, it is advisable to adjust your lighting to avoid getting any reflection from the product.
One trick to avoid getting reflections for jewelry photoshoots is placing an aluminum foil around the bottom of your camera lens.
There are six angles you can use to capture jewelry.
Take as many shots of your product from different angles and upload selected images from these to your product listing.
Jewelry photographs, in general, have very clear shots. Hence, it is easy to make out any dirt or smudges.
Clean the jewelry well before the shoot. Ensure you use gloves to avoid getting your fingerprint on the jewels.
Artificial Intelligence is here to help businesses by making their lives and work easier. Using AI in jewelry photos is just the same.
AI applications like DoMyShoot help users take guided shots with its intelligent overlays. Thus easing the task of creating high-converting product images for eCommerce platforms.
Invest in a tripod to get better-quality images and reduce shake. You can find excellent quality tripods on Amazon for $15 - $30.
Finally, complete the post-production to ensure an appropriate color balance and consistency before uploading your jewelry images.
DoMyShoot allows you to create and customize your product image depending on the product category of your choice. You can choose from 20+ different product categories and 100+ different products.
DoMyShoot’s intelligent overlays make it easier for newbie product photographers and jewelry business owners to take pictures of their products without worrying about the perfect angle.
All you have to do is -
Once done taking product photos from different angles, next up, DoMyShoot will remove the background keeping only your product in the frame. You can then choose from 1000+ different backgrounds to apply to your product image without having to take extra effort to set up a background on your own.
One of the most critical attributes of the DoMyShoot app is that, unlike most product photography apps, DoMyShoot enhances your product images depending on the policies of the platform or marketplace you are listing your product on.
Different marketplaces have different policies and guidelines pertaining to product images.
If you are an online jewelry business owner who sells their products on different marketplaces, you’ll know it is difficult to keep up with all these policies.
Unlike most jewelry retouch apps and product photo apps that only help businesses create a product image, DoMyShoot’s AI helps businesses create images as per the guidelines of various platforms and marketplaces to ensure your product images get a 100% acceptance rate.