Lights! iPhones! Jewelry! (Part 1)

After deciding it was time to get all of our jewelry--well some of our jewelry at least--up in our Etsy Store (http://www.etsy.com/shop/PartnersInCharms), we planned a photography day at Stef’s house. We had just received Cloud Dome’s newest creation – a Universal Disc for the Cloud Dome that was especially made for the original Cloud Dome and a Disc designed especially for working with just smartphones– and were anxious for a chance to see how it worked.

Remember that neither of us is anywhere near being a professional photographer and so that is the beauty of the iPhone/iPad used in connection with the Cloud Dome equipment – you can get good results being a total rookie!

Since we knew we were going to go at it intensely this is how we set up:

Equipment:

Large table that we could easily move around

iPhone 4s

iPhone 5

iPad Air

2 Nimbus Cloud Domes for Smartphones (we each have one which was very helpful)

Nimbus Large Earring and Necklace Stand

Nimbus Dome Photography Base

Nimbus Cradle with Tripod mount

Cloud Dome

Universal Disc for Cloud Dome

Background Pad

Lighting

Trays of jewelry separated by type to photograph

Empty trays to put jewelry pieces in after they had been shot

Props and display pieces

Small piece of white or neutral color polymer clay or museum clay

Basic jewelry tools

Pop can (more on this later)

Cloud Dome box (more on this later, as well!)

Snacks and drinks!

We set the table up so that we could both shoot at the same time. Since we had divided the jewelry into types – rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings--we set up two stations to photograph.

Setting up the table with lights, Cloud Dome equipment and jewelry organized by type into trays. Oh, and of course coffee and pop to keep us going!

I took pictures of earrings, while Stefanie worked on taking images of bracelets and rings.

Stefanie attaching her iPhone to the Nimbus Cloud Dome

Setting up the Nimbus Cloud with the Nimbus Large Earring and Necklace Stand. The iPhone goes into the elastic triangle band to hold it in place, but I needed it to take this photo!

Once all those smaller jewelry items were shot, we worked together on the larger necklaces, with Stef doing the camera work while I removed and replaced product tags.

Stefanie arranging necklace on Cloud Dome Background Pad.

Taking picture using the new SmartPhone attachment for the Cloud Dome. Love it!!!

Here we are using our iPad and the Universal Disc for the Cloud Dome. This is great but we really found it was much easier to use the iPhone which also has a better camera.

Altogether we probably put in about 8 hours of work, taking about 300 pictures of approximately 125 pieces of jewelry! Incredible!!!

Good news is that we got that much done. Bad news is that now we have to edit the images in Camera+ and PhotoShop Touch and write great descriptions to post them to Etsy (http://www.etsy.com/shop/PartnersInCharms)!

Some images that we have edited and are up on our Partners in Charms Etsy store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/PartnersInCharms

Be sure to watch for Part Two of Lights! iPhones! Jewelry! where we will share some of the time and energy-saving tips we learned from this fun experience!

We want to thank Cindy Lichfield, Cloud Dome inventor, for all of her fabulous support! You can contact her at: http://www.clouddome.com/store/contactus.html

Happy beading!

Kathy and Stef