How to Get Started in Digital Jewelry Photography

If you’re an online jewelry seller, you know how important a good photograph can be. Learning to professionally photograph your jewelry can mean the difference between selling an item for an excellent price and one that's barely adequate. That's why it's so important to master the art of jewelry photography if you want to be a successful online seller.

If you already sell online, you most likely you already have a digital camera. If not, you'll want to get a camera that has at least five mega-pixels such as the Canon Powershot A95 which is an excellent camera for the price. It's best to purchase a digital camera that allows you to make adjustments in shutter speed and aperture size both automatically and manually to give you the flexibility you need to photograph jewelry well.

You'll also want to purchase a tripod to take jewelry photographs. A tripod is important for holding your camera steady. This allows your images come out sharp and clear. You may think you can get by without one, but even taking a shallow breath during jewelry photography can cause the camera to shake, ruining your beautiful image. Tripods are generally quite reasonable in price and can often be found for under $30.00.

Designate a corner of a room to set up a small area for photographing your jewelry. Move a large table into the room and use this as your base for jewelry photography. To avoid the appearance of shadows and glare when taking your photos, you can purchase a light tent at your local camera store. This helps to diffuse the light, eliminating shadows and reflections during photography. It's possible to make your own, but this is often more trouble than it's worth.

You’ll need to consider lighting for your jewelry photography. If you want to take the more expensive route, you can visit your camera store and purchase special photography lamps. The less expensive route is to buy three table lamps at your local discount department store for under $10.00 each. If you haven't seen these, these are lamps with a metal base and a flexible metal stem that allow you to move the head of the lamp in different directions. While you're there, pick up some fluorescent daylight bulbs which should give you a pure white light to help eliminate shadows and other detractors from your jewelry photographs

The last thing you'll need are some inexpensive jewelry displays to hold your earrings and necklaces for jewelry photography. You should be able to purchase these at any store that sells jewelry display items and you should find a variety from which to choose.

Now that you have your necessary items, how should you set it up to photograph jewelry effective? You'll want to place your light tent on the table you've designated for your photography. Place your lamps along each side of your light tent. You can then set up your tripod with your camera and place it in front of the opening of the light tent.

You can may choose to place a background against the back wall of your light tent This can be done by pinning a dark fabric to the light tent wall and extending it into the floor or your tent to create a seamless backdrop. You can then place your jewelry stand in the center of the light tent. Place the head of your tripod a bit above your jewelry display with your jewelry, so you're looking down slightly on your jewelry. This gives a more professional appearing photo.

This is your basic set up for jewelry photography. By using a camera that allows you to alter your aperture size and shutter speed such as the Canon Powershot 95, you can make changes in these parameters to blur the background of your jewelry, allowing the eye to really focus in on your jewelry pieces. Your camera manual will explain to you how to alter these settings.

Don't forget to use a good photo editing software to crop out any excess background and to make subtle changes in hue, contrast, intensity etc. You want your photos to be clean and sharply focused.

Spend some time experimenting with different aperture sizes and shutter speeds and see what kind of results you get. With a bit of practice, you'll find your jewelry photography getting better over time. Practice makes perfect.