Necklaces are timeless products, from antiquity to the present. About a fifth of women love to add jewelry items to their carts. Online searching and shopping for necklaces are becoming increasingly popular in the eCommerce industry.
To thrive in your online jewelry business, all you need to do is take eye-popping and lucrative shots. Because you can’t let customers touch your product with their hands online, they can still adore it through their eyes. Only creative necklace photography can boost your eCommerce sales to the next level.
But the concerning factor is how to photograph necklaces. Let’s get started with this photography guide and some incredible tips and tricks to attract potential fashionistas.
What Types of Equipment are Used in Necklace Photography?
Necklace product photography seems easy, but it isn’t. You get into trouble while dealing with its reflections, adding sparkle, and brightening the shadows around it. So it requires specialized gear and thorough knowledge of the depth of the field.
Let’s move into it and get to know which types of equipment can make your precious ornaments stunning!
Get the Right Camera
Great necklace shots are the only thing that requires high-end skills, not high-end camera features. Instead of thinking about what model and brand you’re using, think about how creative you are in your approach to photographing jewelry.
Figure out the right camera for jewelry photography must have-
- Macro capabilities,
- A sharp and crisp manual focus mode,
- Incredible depth of field, and
- High-resolution image quality.
Grab Macro Lens
Necklaces are intricate objects that must be photographed up close. So when women buy a necklace from e-commerce, they know its details.
A macro lens is used to capture close-up necklace shots. You may be worried that macro lenses are the most expensive gear. You can find it at different prices and focal length ranges.
You must keep these things in mind when searching lenses for jewelry photography-
- 50 mm to 150 mm focal lengths,
- Maintaining the lens’ autofocus functions, and
- A 1:1 magnification ratio.
Pick the Softbox
Taking good quality jewelry pictures with the artificial lighting setup can only be possible with the softbox. If you want to achieve dramatic results with minimal effort, know how to use a softbox for product photography. Lighting and jewelry both have a negative relationship. So, the softbox softens and diffuses the intense light and ensures the light doesn’t reflect.
Right Backdrops
Setting up compatible backgrounds for jewelry photography enhances the jewelry’s aesthetic appeal. While you capture silver or gold necklaces, you should use a dark backdrop, like black, blue, brown, or grey, which looks so alluring to the eyes of the customers and beautifully captures all the details. Even natural backdrops can convey your feelings about a wedding, an engagement, or other occasional events.
Get a Sturdy Tripod
A tripod is helpful for still-life product photography, like necklaces, earrings, and other jewelry items. Without causing a camera shake or aberration, a tripod can help you adjust the focus point. It will also change the depth of field, allowing you to shoot at a slower shutter speed.
Use Natural or Artificial Lighting
Natural light photography works like a wonder in necklace photoshoots. It creates a flattering and smooth atmosphere. When the sun is shining strongly, it causes harsh reflections and unflattering shadows. As a result, you must know how to use natural light properly.
- To create a backlight, position the necklace near the window light.
- If the light is too harsh, add a light diffuser.
- Place a reflector opposite the window to eliminate the shadow and even out the lighting.
On the other hand, you can use artificial lighting, such as a ring or continuous light, and a softbox to create soft and even lighting for jewelry photography.
Choose the White Foamboard
Necklaces are shiny objects that reflect light in both good and bad ways. It’s hard to make the surroundings brighter by using reflections. Therefore, you can use a white seamless foam board to reflect light into the shadow area, adding sparkle.
10 Steps to Photograph necklace
Necklaces are insanely diverse in style and length. While photographing different lengths of it, including collars, matinées, chokers, pendants, lariats, princesses, chains, plastrons, bibs, and so on, you need to focus on some tips that inspire your inner fashionista.
1. Prepare Your Necklace
The necklaces can be small or lengthy, but the intricacies are the main things to capture. Cleaning and polishing should always come before taking pictures. Therefore, cleaning them every time you touch them is best. You can also save time by wearing cotton gloves.
2. Stylish Up Your Style
Styling your jewelry photos must be balanced, emotional, and elevated with props. You can creatively tell your brand’s story with visually stunning necklace images. Consider how to style up-
– Hanging
The hanging form of a necklace is more captivating. This line primarily applies to pendants, chains, plastrons, rivieres, negligees, and other similar items. It depicts the length vividly and is pleasing to the eye of fashionistas. You can even use a necklace stand for photography.
– Model
Models showcase jewelry to the customers to make them understand your brand. Model necklace photography ideas can be great content for your eCommerce store and other social media handles. The target market can relate to the appearance and feel of the product when models in photographs wear jewelry.
Not only Indians but people around the world clearly adore gold, pearl, and diamond necklace photography. However, Indian traditional gold necklace photography shows a model dressed in traditional clothing. As a result, model necklace photography’s popularity has reached its peak now.
– Flat Lay
Necklace flat-lay photography is a more traditional type of photography styling. You can keep themin different poses, including juxtaposing, spiral, symmetrical, and rounded. Lighting is important here because there is a high chance of reflections when the product is captured from a flat-lay angle.
– Mannequin bust
Photographing necklaces is ideal to do with models. Mannequin Bust, on the other hand, comes into play when you’re on a tight budget. Jewelry mannequins mimic the wearer’s neck size, allowing any potential buyer to feature herself on them.
3. Setting Your Camera
If you know the best camera settings, photographing a necklace isn’t all that difficult compared to other still-life subjects.
– ISO
Keep your ISO settings at their lowest, between 100 and 200, based on the lighting conditions, because a higher ISO will increase the noise and even ruin the photography.
– Aperture
Aperture, the f-stop value should be somewhere around f/11 to f/14. An ideal aperture to consider for product photography is f/14. It beautifully combines clarity and focus for jewelry photography. If you want a higher depth of field and to blur the background slightly, use an f-stop value of f/22 or f/32.
– Shutter Speed
If you’re using a tripod, shutter speed isn’t a hassle. As a result, there is no chance of camera shake or unwanted movement, lessening the possibility of blurry edges.
– Focus stacking
A necklace is jewelry of details, try focus stacking if you’re having trouble getting all the details in focus in a single shot. Take multiple shots of the same scene and combine them into one. Following that, do post-production to bring the products into focus.
4. Pay Attention to the Details
Details are crucial when enticing customers to buy jewelry from your online store. Women are drawn to the details of jewelry. To create a sharp image and build customer trust with just a glance, keep the aperture high and focus fully on the product you photograph.
5. Deal with Reflections
Necklaces are made with metals and shiny gemstones, which are highly reflective. When photographing them, there is a high chance that you will encounter reflection issues. A pleasing shot requires no science, only a sense of light position.
Position your lights overhead but closer because further lights may cause harsh lighting effects.
If you’re using multiple lights, keep them at 45-degree angles on either side to eliminate shadows, and you can use the softbox to soften the light and reduce the glare.
6. Become Creative
Being creative in photography wins half the game. Keep your necklaces the center of attention. So you can play around with shadows and depth of field, offering stylistic product opportunities. Try out some story elements, so the fashion enthusiasts connect with you the most; do not exaggerate them.
7. Think About the Composition
Composition is based on how the human eye interprets an image and is drawn to a product. Several composition techniques include the rule of thirds, the leading lines, the s curve, and the rule of odds.
Each technique assists you in deciding where to place the props and products to create balance and visual amazement in your shots.
8. Know the Color Wheel for Contrast
Keep the colour wheel in mind when photographing your colorful gemstones, metallic, silver, or gold necklaces. You can add compliments to the products.
This is due to the color wheel being a visual reminder of which colors work well together. In other words, use as few shades as possible and keep color contrast to a minimum to avoid drawing potential customers’ attention away from the product
9. Multiple Shots from Different Angles
Customers overlooked the images, which were captured from the same angles. Experiment with different angles or overhead shots because customers prefer to admire the necklaces the most. This is because having more product images increases product transparency, which builds trust and increases sales.
10. Don’t Forget Post Productions
Color accuracy and consistency are very important when photographing necklaces, especially if you’re doing it for your eCommerce store. So the products should look life-like and accurately balance the color temperature. The imbalance in the white balance of it can ruin the photograph. Use a gray card or the camera’s white balance mode if it has one. Don’t forget to post-production. You balance your white balance and reduce your worst enemy, reflections.
FAQs
What is a necklace with a photo called?
It is called a locket or pendant. They’re popular among loved ones who want to feel their presence in their hearts.
What does a necklace symbolize?
The necklace is a symbol of love, sentiment, and honor.
What is the best background to photograph a necklace?
Black is the most popular background for photographing necklaces. But in the marketplace, light gray and white are mostly used to focus the subjects precisely.
What is the best DSLR camera for necklace photography?
Many cameras can be regarded as the best, regardless of their specifications or their transparency in use. Among them, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, Nikon D850, and Sony Alpha a7 III are the best DSLR cameras for necklace photography.
Wrap-Up,
Necklace photography is the most rewarding and lucrative endeavor. Only stunning jewelry photos can show you the way up from scratch.
By following our tips and tricks, you can gain incredible mastery. Remember to inject your own flair into your eCommerce store to attract more fashionistas.
Share your thoughts in the comment section below!