This past month, during the Super Bowl, our client Reeds-Jenss aired a regional ad around Buffalo, NY. We provided the high definition 1080p jewelry video and their team assembled the ad which had quite a blockbuster-movie teaser’esque appeal. Please be sure to have your sound on and view in full HD.

Reeds-Jenss has trusted EpicMind Studio to help them bring their television ads to the next level. Future videos will be featuring beautiful collections such as Pandora. With broadband in everybody’s back pocket these days, advertising has never had such a great reach. Look at YouTube – ads are now visible more than ever – any one of these spots can be tailored for your desired market and demographic.

In the above project, Reeds-Jenss asked that we record multiple angles of each diamond engagement ring – they wanted to convey every intricate detail of the jewelry, sort of how today’s car commercials focus more on the details than the entire car itself. For the video, we provided between 12-20 angles per ring with various zoom-ins and outs, as well as pans adding dimension to the jewelry. Recording the diamond jewelry on black places emphasis on the scintillation of stones – on white, the effect isn’t as grand and emphasis is place more on the metal instead such as the case of wedding bands (or something that needs a subtle-soft feel for jewelry).

We’re looking forward to 2012 and the additional commercial spots we will be creating alongside our growing client list. Look for future posts with new ads in the coming months.

I’ve finally made it back to my blog after a long absence – work has consumed most if not all of my time: We’ve been busy shooting hundreds of photos and videos for the fall season which includes the ever popular Thanksgiving/Black Friday and December holidays. It’s the time of the year most retailers make their money.

Today’s blog will showcase a very simple 2 light setup that can give quite a lovely metallic shine to a ring shot tabletop. The setup consists of using 1 softbox, 1 diffusion panel (in this case, a run-of-the-mill 5-in-1 circular one easily available at any quality photo store) and finally a strobe with a 30-degree grid mounted on it. Scroll down to see the before and after version rollovers.

In the my previous blog post entitled Cosmetic Product Photography Using a Simple 1-Light Setup I showed how we can use a simple 1 light setup to get a lovely gradient shimmer on metallic objects. That time I bounced light on an opaque white foamcore panel. The strobe had a grid modifier mounted on it as well. I re-iterate the purpose: A gridded-strobe hitting a surface will generally diffuse itself somewhat in a nice gradient-like fashion. This will give metals more character and shape.

Normally at our studio we employ 2-3 techniques to light our jewelry or other metallic objects:

Softbox: This gives even light across metallic object – it doesn’t sculpt the object much as the light is rather flat. The “empty space” between softboxes gives the shadow areas that define the object. This is why I normally rarely if ever recommend light-tents – you normally have too little areas with no light therefore your photo will look generally flatly lit, and dull.

Bounced light off white card/foamcore This method is very similar to passing light through a diffusion panel – it’s similar to the above method – it’s a simpler method than nearly anybody can just undertake. The problem with this technique comes when multiple lights are used and several bounces are needed – you need to use flags to block out the light that might created an unpleasant specular highlight on the jewellery. I normally use this technique the least though I do often use this when photographing the collection coins for the Royal Canadian Mint, see the next image. I’ll try to discuss that technique in a future blog when time permits.

A coin we shot for the Royal Canadian Mint recently using the bounced light technique.

Diffusion panel based lighting: This is a technique we’re using a little more these days here – I find it gives jewelry a more sculpted, nearly CGI or post-processed look – on quality rings its surreal.

In any case, and without further a due, here is the setup I used to photograph the image you see above using diffusion lighting:
Here’s the lighting diagram for the above image. Very simple indeed

The camera was set slightly above table-top level with the diamond engagement ring. As you can see in the reflection in the “before” image, you can see the camera reflection in the prongs holding the center stone. The purpose of the softbox behind the camera was to light-up the diamonds. I could have added additional lights or bounce cards, but I wanted to illustrate here how such a simple setup can lead to a nice image.

The gridded-strobe was aimed to give a pleasant graduated feathering of light on the top portion of metal – play around with it; we’re in the digital age, so play around and see where you like the light, and at what strength.

In post-processing, we cleaned up the ring and diamonds: we desaturated the gold and then applied a color balance of cyan/blue to make it more “metallic” – take this as “artistic liberty”. The diamonds are adjusted on their own layer. I kept the original background and again, simply cleaned it and adjusted the curves on it.

It’s quite a simple setup – but one that gives great results fast. We use more complex setups for jewelry angled differently (such as a standing ring etc), but it’s generally a similar principle.

Rollover the image to see the original, as shot.

The image above was done for our client Ex Aurum jewellers of Montreal. It will be featured as an ad in Weddings Bells and Marrions-Nous magazines upcoming editions.

Sometimes shooting away from the classic all white, or all black background leads to some wonderful images – Images that showcase sparkle and fire, alongside a mood for the brand or the item itself. In this image here for Ex Aurum, I decided to shoot on a leatherette and added some simple background lighting to add to the mood.Blue and purple are generally quite awesome to use with jewelry – they are very opulent/royal in lineage. I added a tilt to the image giving it a little more dynamics – too many times are images shot “table-top” straight on. Adding some “jazz” did this shot some good.

The shot was generally done “as-is” with very little post-production. Purple was added in post-production as well as a reduction in the blue being reflected on the rear shank of the ring by the client’s request. We then added a little more blue in the actual stones, and removed some reds/yellows.

The lighting used were 2 softboxes + 2 stobes with grids. In the back there was a colored gel used.

Watch this same ring in all its glory sparkle to life in 1080p

We tried to capture the fire as well. Check out our upcoming blog regarding video promotion for your online, and in-store display needs. The sky’s the limit to make your product shine.

Jewelry videography of the month – July from EpicMind Studio on Vimeo.

Pink & Mint Tourmaline rings with diamonds set in 18k gold.

I shot this as a last minute image because the items had to be returned rush to the client in question for the JCK Las Vegas show. Sometimes the time to do jewellery photography is so short that we only have the time to shoot the requested images before they are sent back. For insurance purposes, it’s completely logical, but from an artistic point of view, you wish you could “savor” them more. I had a little spare time with this set of items, and so I decided to stack the rings on top of each creating a pleasant image because of the colorful interaction between the tourmalines gemstones: I should have called this one “peek-a-boo”, but now you’d find me silly.

Rings that feature great workmanship, higher-end diamonds and stones normally require less retouching. This was the case in this image here. Dust was removed; a little bit of the rear-shank/gold was drawn out to be cleaner. Diamonds and gemstones were color corrected and cleaned-up a little.

A little background information about Tourmaline gemstone:

Tourmalines are the most varied gemstone out there: They come in nearly any color, and no two tourmalines are alike. Their color will vary depending on the light source used to look at them. Finally, many tourmalines exhibit 2 or more colors. This is why our jewelry clients need to specify what color the tourmalines must match to.

Cosmetic photography using a relatively simple setup.

I decided to have some fun just recently and decided to step away from my daily jewellery photography work and do (finally) a new blog entry. This past weekend I was shopping with my wife and found myself in the makeup section of The Bay department store. My wife decided to buy some makeup by Yves St-Laurent. I saw an ad for the item she bought – a product called Metal Eyes. I told my wife that if I bought it for her the only condition was that I could shoot it before she used it (hehe). I decided to recreate an image similar to the one I saw.

The ad that inspired this blog entry

The image has a nice graded light painting it; something that immediately tells me it’s not simply a softbox bouncing light onto it. Softboxes generally give an even diffused light across a surface, and to get it to graduate is much tougher than some other methods.

As I only had one makeup kit at my disposal, I decided to reproduce the lower portion of the ad. Doing the top part would require risking ruining the makeup with water and as this was my only kit, my couch would be my best friend should my wife’s temper be raised (hehe). During real shoots, clients normally have several kits at our disposal, where the nicest one is selected, and budgets are allotted for this sort of mishap.

The Setup!

Out-of-camera, stacked image.

This was the simplest setup possible I’ve used recently. I used 1 strobe mounted with a 30°grid. The object was shot laying flat on the shooting table sitting on white foamcore. Behind the object, I had a 20”x30” white foamcore at a slight angle held by a clamp. The strobe was pointing towards the center (this is where the work goes, placing the light to get a nice gradient on the object). You might have to play a little to get the light to shimmer nicely on your object. It will come with experience (and more play).

To the immediate left of the object and camera, was a 18”x20” black foamcore. This added some black delineation to the object by bouncing back some black. Finally, at the front of the object, was a small 4”x8” piece of silver card that filled in the shadows on the hinge of the little makeup box.

When I shot the image, I first shot without any water droplets to get the right shimmer across the gold cover. Once satisfied, I spritzed some water with a bottle. On a real shoot, the droplets would be critical, and most often several dozen images are made with various droplet configurations and selected by the art director and client. For my demo/blog purpose, this was adequate.

I used focus-stacking comprising of 4 shots exporting to tiff. Color, contrast, and other tweaks were done in Photoshop.

The actual ad for Yves St-Laurent was photographed using 2 light sources reflecting on a card. You can see the 2 sources by looking at the droplets. This brief tutorial was to give you some insights for you to try at your own studio. The sky’s the limit! Stop surfing and go shoot!

Here’s the lighting diagram for this image. Quite simple no?

Diamonds are sparkling and are full of life.

I was lucky to have one of my clients stop by with an exquisite diamond engagement ring featuring a near 4-carat fancy yellow diamond. With little time to shoot, I took several angles, and selected the following one to retouch. Sometimes, clients have little time with their creations before they must “give it” to the lucky owner; this was one of those times. I wish I could have taken more photos of it!

In this blog, I’ll talk about some techniques we use in the studio to make a diamond “pop-off” the screen or page. You can see the before & after image at the bottom of this blog.

First thing that we do with all jewelry images is to create clipping paths for both the item and the stones. Like this we can tweak every little detail to our heart’s desire. Once clipped out, we create several layers from bottom to top:

1. The original image, untouched
2. Layer for the actual “metal”
3. Layer for the smaller stones
4. Layer(s) for special, or larger stones that deserve “exclusive” treatment

In the image above this was nearly the case, except we had one layer for each of the 3 types of diamonds (yellow center stone, trillion side stones, and the pave stones).

Once everything is isolated, we begin by sharpening the various layers. There’s no right or wrong formula, it’s all about getting diamond facets to come out more. The rule we live by is this: the smaller the stone, the more contrast is gets – the larger the stone the more gradation in color is needs. Large stones need to showcase their facets and several gradients of shades in the blues, black and whites, etc.

We sharpen exclusively using the simple Unsharp Mask Filter (USM). We use 2-pass method: One stronger with a larger radius followed by one with a smaller radius. I’m not mentioning the actual numbers because this depends on the actual pixel size of your file. For print we use much larger radius and small ones for web output.

We then work on the contrasts of each layer to maximize the “pop” factor. Starting with the small pave diamonds, we usually brighten them up substantially until they are visually filled with mostly mid and high tones. We don’t want too much contrast (or tones) because depending on the final size; the diamonds will simply blend with the gold, and make the jewelry look dead.

Another useful technique is to darken the area behind the smaller diamonds (prongs) to increase this apparent contrast even more. Look at the following diagram to see an exaggerated view regarding contrasts.

The effect of foreground vs background contrasts. This can be applied to jewelry retouching.

On larger stones, we need to retain most shades because this is what renders all the wonderful life and sparkle to them (and makes clients and buyers go ohhhh, ahhhh). We approach them slowly, sometime selecting sub-areas of facets using the pen tool, and adjusting with curves, or in higher priced jobs, especially in magazine advertising, we need to sometimes redraw them using gradients.

One thing I can recommend for standard “white” diamonds is to remove most warm colors (unless you are showcasing loose diamonds as in my previous blog/tutorial here). Yellows and reds are unwanted normally. We strip out colors using the hue/saturation palette via the channels on a per-color basis. Some people like black and white diamonds, while some have cyan and blue mostly (for example Tiffany’s look).

Diamonds with many defects are a pain in the butt to retouch and will require much more attention (hence time and money) should the client want them “clean”. Normally, the lower the quality of the jewelry, the more time is required to finish the retouching when compared to a high-end item. There’s not much that can be done with items containing what I call “grains of salt”, or “peppered with inclusions”. If your client can’t live with that, then replacement or redrawing is needed as mentioned about. Several studios like to copy/paste the same stone over and over throughout an item to reduce the retouching work. Take a look next advert you see, you’ll be surprised how often this technique is used (I personally don’t like that much as it’s too obvious in my eyes so care must be made when using this technique, you should rotate and distort appropriately).

Retouching isn’t a complicated science, it’s just a time consuming effort where attention to detail is primordial, and being able to reproduce a “look” for each client is important. Each one of our clients has their own style, making each job unique.

High Precision Diamond Cutting Tool with Optical End Products

Hi, and welcome to a new blog entry (finally!). I’ve been kept away from the blog for a while, but here I go again!

In today’s blog I’ll move slightly away from the jewelry photography realm, and showcase a job that we shot a little while ago. The client, K&Y Diamonds, is a global leader in high precision diamond cutting tools used in the automotive, aerospace, optical and medical industries. These tools are used to cut, shape, and polish object for their respective uses. Because most of their tools are small to tiny (2″ down to microns), and that they are metallic and have diamonds, they contact us knowing that we work pretty much exclusively with small shiny objects. For this particular job, they wanted to have their tools photographed with “end products” besides them. They also stressed the importance of color, that the tools appear “high tech” and as sharp as possible.

I decided on using the blue color gel as the main highlight color in the series of images. Blue is a very typical color used in technology imagery: it conveys the right emotion to the consumer. Using orange, doesn’t do as well .

Using blue light, we give a “techie” feel to products.

The setup was photographed on a large piece of brushed aluminum provided by a contact at Electrolux/GE. Collecting many different types of materials is really important for the product photographer: you never know when you might use a certain surface. The brushed aluminum worked great because the tool itself has a brushed finish – thus creating unity.

The tricky part of this job was the glass products: 3 pieces of glass used in the optical industry (the final end-product are eyeglass lenses). They posed some difficulties with respect to where lighting can be put, at what height and at what intensity. Everything gets reflected and warped via internal refraction.

The lighting setup I used was composed of 3 lights. The key light was a softbox mounted to the left of the camera, this illuminates the tool and gives the nice bright highlight on the diamond tip. A secondary, fill-light was placed further away to the right of the camera, and the intensity was reduced to simply bring back some detail on the tool’s right side. Finally, a blue colored gel mounted with barn doors was pointed on a black paper background approximately 3’ away, and 1.5’ higher than the setup. Raising or lowering this light affected the amount of blue that showed-up in the frame.

The options are limitless when it comes to painting with light. Using various light modifiers, as discussed in my previous blog entry, you can create stunning combinations, even without Photoshop. In this last image below, I have added a yellow gel on the camera right to give additional color. The pink/red hue was added in post-production via Photoshop. As a photographer, go as far as your mind can see (or a client’s ability to pay for good work).

Here’s the lighting diagram to the top image.

Using colored gels, we can sculpt a rather unexciting piece metal into something much more interesting (object is part of a car piston).

Two diamonds composited together from two individual photos showcasing lovely faceting and fire.

A diamond’s beauty lies in its sparkle. The main challenge when photographing the stone is capturing and showing off that natural brilliance. In this project, we’ll shoot loose diamonds against a black background.

A diamond is basically a translucent, prismatic, glass-like object that refracts light. It’s the cut of the diamond that determines the pattern of refracted light and the type of lighting required for the optimal photographic effect.

Some photographers prefer constant lighting because they can quickly see the effect of the light. Others wrap diffusion paper around the stone in a cone like-fashion, pointing lights directly at the subject and also using a multi-LED bulb, such as the Dazzler, to achieve the “fire” effect in a diamond (the flecks of light). Personally, I prefer using my conventional lighting system—strobes, softboxes, or bare lights with reflectors and grids. I think you should be able to get the “fire” from a diamond using these tools alone.

Let’s get started: First, wear gloves. Medical-style latex gloves work well, but any lint-free substitute will do. With gloved hands, inspect the diamond and remove any oils, fingerprints, and dust. I recommend a standard jewelry cleaner with a quick rinse under water. The less retouching we have to do in post-production, the better.

Next, place the diamond on a black Plexiglass surface. In the example above, I have placed them pointing to off-center for a non-standard diamond shot.

Now, we need to look at our light sources. Let’s compare non-diffused light (using the Sun as an example) with diffused light (clouds) on diamonds. On a cloudless sunny day, a diamond will sparkle with all its might, producing the “fire” effect. On a cloudy day, a diamond will be duller and whiter, showing less “fire”. Photographically speaking, we generally want a little of both. Too much “fire” obscures the shape, while too much diffusion loses the life of the stone.

Shot using ONLY 2 softboxes, colors boosted in post-processing

Working in the studio, I need to reproduce this in a controlled environment using a combination of bare strobes (which act like the Sun), and softboxes (the clouds). It’s a balancing act that requires trial and error to find the right mix to achieve a pleasing image. The advantage of the studio is that I can have several “suns” and “clouds” at my disposal.

I begin by setting up the clouds, with one softbox on each side of the camera, and take a photo. Boosting saturation and adjusting levels in the RAW file sometimes gives enough “fire” immediately, in which case you have a winning shot. (See the straight-on diamond image below.) Often, you’ll need to do more.

To replicate the Sun (a small, non-diffused light source), I use bare strobes at various angles, creating “fire”. There is no right or wrong way to shoot. It might take some practice to get the perfect image because every stone is slightly different and reacts uniquely. Continue moving light positions and angles to the stone until you capture the perfect image.

Lighting diagram for diamond image at the top of this blog. Using both “sun” and “clouds” in the studio.

I hope this behind the scenes has given you some insight. Should you have any questions or topic you would like me to maybe cover, please send me feedback below or drop me an email.

The task was to create a holiday-themed ad and I was given a diverse set of jewelry items to work with: various pearl items, diamond key pendants, and a diamond sapphire ring. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to incorporate so many unrelated pieces onto a festive background and maintain a professional tone. In marketing, less is more and a common theme is an important starting point.

A mistake many jewelers make is to request too many items with incongruent styles in a single ad. Their goal is to please every type of client with one ad, but this often backfires and ultimately cheapens the ad.

Ads should have one focal point, not 10. That doesn’t mean you’re limited to one ring. You can group a few pieces together in an interesting composition, carefully placing each object. I chose three key-shaped, diamond pendants.

The holiday theme presents a setup challenge since festive props tend to be quite colorful and, if used in the wrong way, steal the spotlight away from the jewelry. An additional obstacle when photographing jewelry is its small size relative to other props. If you do manage to find small enough props not to overshadow the main subject, when photographed close up, the props are more likely to show production faults and ruin a beautiful photo.

I visited a few stores, collecting a number of props that could set the right mood—but once I got to the shooting table, I realized they simply didn’t work with the pendants. I had bought fabrics, artisanal papers, ornaments—heck, even a bottle of wine! Sometimes an idea is only good on paper and when you actually prep the scene, it fails miserably. Who said ad design was easy?

I finally settled on light-colored Christmas tree ornaments. I blurred them slightly by shooting at a wider aperture of f8 for a shallower depth of field so that the ornament was recognizable, but didn’t detract from the diamond pendants. The setup included a total of 4 lights. 3 lights had 24×36 softboxes mounted, and one light with a 20-degree grid. If you aren’t familiar with certain light modifiers, check my previous blog post here. Pendants where hung via flexible arm clamp. I retouched the image in Photoshop, de-saturating the pendants to remove some of the color cast, adding saturation and color to both the paper background and ornaments, and finally darkening above and below the image to accommodate the text and logo. Overall, retouching was minor. The text and logo were added in InDesign for a final press version delivered as a PDF.

The setup included a total of 4 lights. 3 lights had 24×36 softboxes mounted, and one light with a 20-degree grid. Pendants where hung via flexible arm clamp.

If you have questions or suggestions for this and other blogs, please contact me.

Two greeting cards we’ve created for our clients used in mail promotion.

It’s been a very busy week here at EpicMind, and we’re a little late posting our new blog. In the mean time, here are two greeting cards we’ve created for our clients promotion. In the next blog I will go behind the scenes and show how the key-pendant image was shot. Stay tuned!