Lights! iPhones! Jewelry! Part II

In this blog we are going to share some of the time and energy-saving tips we learned during our Lights! iPhones! Jewelry! photo shoot to start getting our jewelry up on our Etsy store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/PartnersInCharms. In that blog we talked about what equipment we used and how we set it up. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, you can check it out here: http://partnersincharms.blogspot.com/2014/03/lights-iphones-jewelry-part-1.html

Our tips…

Make sure to sort your jewelry into types before shooting begins. This way you can take all your earring photos, then your rings, etc. It saves a ton of time because you don’t have to switch your set-ups as often.

We sorted our jewelry into trays and holders by type: rings, necklaces,

bracelets and earrings.

Keep a set of basic tools handy in case a piece needs to be tweaked – like tightening up a loop or adjusting a jump ring.

Have extra hangtags and earring cards available in case you have to replace a label after shooting.

Hang and earring tags, pen and basic jewelry tools were kept close at hand.

Since we didn’t have any museum clay available we used a small piece of polymer clay to help with getting great shots of our rings.

Stef found that a pop can was a handy way of getting a nice smooth line on necklaces, especially those with ball chain.

Our treats became tools when Stef discovered a great way to smooth out

jewelry chain with an empty pop can!

Watch what you wear. We found that the bright pink top that Stef was wearing reflected in some of the images, so wear white or a light neutral color.

You may want to have some props ready at hand such as velvet or leather necks or small clear bottles that you can rest a bracelet against.

To get an angled shot, we just left the iPhone on the Cloud Dome and then picked up and angled the whole thing to get some interesting images.

By keeping the iPhone attached to the Nimbus Cloud, Stef was able to get some great shots of our beautiful rings that are always a challenge to photograph just right!

Keep a flat area of space clear where you are taking the pictures so you can put your Cloud Dome down as you change out your pieces.

Make sure your lighting is right. Take the time to adjust it to the best possible, because this will save time when you are editing photos later. If you are taking photos over a long period of time, you may need to adjust your lighting as the day goes on if you are relying on any natural daylight.

Periodically clean the surface that you are photographing on. It is just amazing how dust, fibers, cat hairs, etc. seem to come out of nowhere and you don’t catch it until you go to editing and have 50 pictures with one silly little bit of dust right in the middle of your image.

One thing that we didn’t do that would have made photo editing easier was to put a white tablecloth down on the table so if shots caught some of the background, it wouldn’t be the dark brown table.

We found that once the camera phone was attached to the Cloud Dome, the rubber bands that held it on made it very difficult to access parts of the screen to focus the image. We solved this problem by using a stylus. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but something with a fine tip to get in there close to the rubber bands.

Using a stylus pen to get even greater precision in our photos.

Treats!!! We are NOT photographers so this is not our favorite task in getting our jewelry out in the marketplace, so we made sure we had plenty of healthy (ha!) snacks to keep us energized!

Keep the box your Cloud Dome comes in. It has a great foam lining that kept the cats entertained and away from “helping” us while we took shots!

Bella and Yoshi both found the Cloud Dome box to be a super comfortable place

to curl up!

To sum up – we had a blast and time seemed to fly as we worked together. The Cloud Dome equipment with our iPhones really made taking that many images possible. You can check out the Cloud Dome equipment at http://www.clouddome.com/.

Here are some of our completed pictures. Be sure to check out our Etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/PartnersInCharms! Lots of wonderful jewelry items to choose from!

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.shtml

Happy Beading!

Kathy and Stef