Here is an ad I photographed to be placed as a banner on an e-commerce website.

For this I positioned the camera quite high in the air, tilting it down toward the jewelry. Two strobes were used, bouncing light quite evenly throughout the gold– very little retouching was necessary!

It’s so important when photographing jewels, that the light is nice and even. You don’t want too much contrast in your diamonds and gemstones, or else the beauty and detail of the gems will not be displayed. Instead, the facets will get lost between blown out highlights and sharp dark areas of lost color and shape.

Soft, even lighting (such as natural light) filters gently into the stone, lighting up every facet so that the camera can see inside the gems, and they shine accurately.

For e-commerce websites, it is SO vital to fill your pages with beautiful, enticing photos that will inspire visitors to desire your products! This is especially true with jewelry, where the items are at higher price points, and often, people will want to see the piece in person before purchasing.

Even if people don’t purchase directly online, your website is an important tool to direct potential customers to your brick-and-mortar store. Often I’ve had Clients say that customers walk in through the door and immediately ask to see pieces they’ve seen on their website (one Client had a customer call into the store saying that he’d seen a creative photo I’d taken of a ring in one of their newsletters, and immediately fell in love with the piece. The surprising thing was, this ring had been in the store for YEARS with absolutely no interest. It goes to show the power of a good photo!)