And you don’t want people to see the teeny tiny little images of your elbows and camera reflected in the surface.

So I looked around for a studio. The sewing machine cabinet is covered up right now, so I decided on the old oak wash stand in the living room. I hung a white sheet from the towel rack, carefully smoothing and curving it to give that “endless horizon” invisible look to the background. Then I tossed down some earrings and took a practice shot, with the camera set to the largest image.

You can see the (resized) result up top. It’s a passable picture. The background is invisible, and the products are in focus and not washed out. But I wanted more! I wanted it to be dramatic and sexy and compelling!

So I whipped out the crinkled black velveteen! Ah, yes, much more like a jewelry store photo, but a bit dark. (It was late, and I was using the flash pointing straight up.) I grabbed my studio lights — a pair of those clamp-on work lights with metal reflectors — and attached one on each side of the studio.

Yow! Way too much light! This would be fine for, say, a wooden object on a white sheet. Wood soaks up a lot of light. But the shiny jewelry and velveteen wash right out. And there wasn’t room to move the lights farther out.

I decided to go back to the flash pointing straight up, and use Picasa to brighten the pictures. Picasa is one of the great secrets of modern photography. (The other secret is to take a boatload of pics and delete all the fuzzy ones!)

For the individual pics, I used my close-up lens. This is a dandy doo-dad that really improves the focus. I also experimented with the backgrounds. Even when it’s almost dark, the color of the velveteen affects the color of the product. I ended up using the crinkled black for the white beads, red for the gold and silver, and green for the red earrings. And as before, I kept the camera set to its largest image.

On the left is the first image. It’s pretty good. I used Picasa to crop it a bit, and then used the Highlight slider under Tuning to add a bit of brightness. You have to be careful with that, it’s easy to distort the colors and wash out the picture. Finally, I used the Sharpen command under Effects. I love Sharpen — it makes the pic just the teensiest bit clearer.

The color in the first picture is actually truer to the earrings. This is often a problem — when you get something bright enough to make a good picture, it doesn’t look the same as under natural light. And likely it will be further distorted by the viewer’s monitor and color settings. So I made sure to give my own impression of the color in the product description.

After everything was finished, I used Picasa’s Export to resize and save, setting the pics at 800 pixels for the website listings and 300 pixels for this blog.

Here’s another example, of the red earrings first on the white sheet and then on the green velveteen. I took the second picture a little to the right rather than straight on, hoping to make it look more three-dimensional.

You’re right, what you’re seeing in the shiny part is teeny little reflections of my camera. That’s because I didn’t have a helper standing to one side with a dark sheet, angling it until it reflects in the surface.

Well, that’s enough wisdom for one lesson! I’m going to make like a tired little teddy bear and fall into an artistic heap somewhere. And remember, the kids can always work their way through college, but you really need costume jewelry!

Product Photography for People Who Don’t Know Their F-Stop from a Hole in the Ground is a post from: Fishing for Treasure — Adventures in Junk!