Jewelry as an object for photographing.

As I wrote in response to the commentary of @photovisions, I want to talk about how I made these photos.

First I would like to tell the background. I have several clients who are engaged in the production of jewelry. I, as a photographer and designer, often take part in the photography of these products.

Most often this survey is not very interesting. But sometimes I am given tasks that can not be defined as "not interesting."

This is one of such tasks. I was given a picture of jewelry with large and very expensive precious stones - morganites.

Morganite is a rare stone, which is one of the varieties of beryl with an admixture of manganese. A distinctive feature of morganite is its gentle color, which does not look like anything, which can range from pastel-peach flowers to flowery-pink and rich purple-red hues.
Morganite is considered a valuable stone, and with optimal characteristics it can sometimes cost even more than a diamond. Morganite has a rare property of pleochroism - the ability to change the shade depending on the angle of view. Another interesting property of this mineral is that, with a long exposure to the sun, it fades and becomes not pink, but transparent.

A ring with a large stone, which you see on the first photo costs about 20 thousand dollars. Such a high cost of the products imposes on me the feeling that I need to put a lot of effort into doing my job as well as possible.

For me, the most important thing is an idea.
It was necessary to come up with something interesting, that would convince the customer. My original idea with black water and rose-colored rose petals was discarded.

You know how offensive for an artist when he is told "no."

In my case, besides the "no" was also an explanation, why so. For the further use of my photos, it was necessary to have not such a powerful dominance of black color. Photos will stand out strongly against the background of others (mostly in light colors).

When I asked if I liked water in the photo and used it in the future, I received an affirmative answer.

So, I have a new task - to get lighter photos with water.

In the previous version with black water I used a black plastic bath for shooting. Now, to get a lighter bottle, I need another bath.
For these needs, I chose a white basin, which I took from my wife from the bathroom. If you take a photo of the water in such a basin without additional tweaks, then it will not be very beautiful. To make the water more blue, I will dissolve a little watercolor paint in it.

The water has turned blue and is more interesting looking. But only the blue color does not give an interesting picture. I decided to add another color light source. Illumination of the object was carried out by two mexico boxes. At the back I put another point source of light, covered with a colored orange film. The task of this source was to add red and pink highlights to the overall picture and create beautiful shades of red on the water.

And as soon as I saw what I had, I realized that the problem had been solved. Then only the technical part of the work remains.
Choose the best view of the product, pick up the possibility of flashes, come up with how to create waves in the basin.
The ring itself was glued to a thin metal spoke, which was fixed on a tripod, at the bottom of the basin. And I created a wave with a regular spoon, with one hand stirring with a spoon in the basin, the other, pressing the camera trigger.

Taking into account the preparation, all this shooting took me almost all day.

I must also say that for shooting small products you have to use technology, in which the product is removed layer by layer. The fact is that the depth of field of a macro lens at this shooting distance is very small and that it would be necessary to collect one whole photo of the whole jewelry from a large number of photos with a slightly shifted focus.

It turns out, this is a whole big procedure.

I hope you enjoyed my article.