Jewelry, Jewelry, Jewelry...

When a friend of mine asked to do some jewelry shots for her, I was not as much perplexed, but fascinated at the challenge. It's really is a colourful bunch of jewelry. For the occasion I decided to build a macro box, which I described in the post before this one. Really just a box with two translucent sheets and a white seamless. I also had with me at the time the Sigma 70mm f/2.8 lens. A fantastic sharp lens that really had no other gripes
but that it had a little too long of a working distance, especially for macro work.

The intricacies of doing macro/product shots is much different from anything I've done with people as subjects. Product shots have to be absolutely immaculate. No dirt, dust, blurriness or faults; solely the mission to portray a given object in the most attractive means. Normally with people as subjects, any flaws or differentiations in a person is something to accentuate in pictures, rather than to mask or fix. This leads to character. The ability for a photographer to instill this personality within pictures adds a dimension, a quality of picture that really is not attainable by even the most meticulously crafted picture. A photograph is only as important as those whom perceive it so. The most technical photographer is nothing unless they have the creative flair to draw their personality into the pictures as well. This may be from an environment, an object they hold dear, or through various photographic conventions. It's this ability for portraits to convey such meaning that really draws me to people photography, rather than products, landscapes or the like. I'll be doing more of this in my upcoming picture projects in the next few weeks, and I'll discuss this more as I go.

More of my favorites below:

[No technical stuff this time 'round; I talk about the Sigma in my last post if you're interested]