YOJ10-15 Knotted Earrings 3

YOJ10-15 Knotted Earrings 3

Knotted Earrings 3 (2010)
Sterling silver, fine silver, tourmaline
Constructed, cold-joined
L 3.7 cm x W 0.5 cm (W 1.45″ x L 0.2″)

Continuing on from last week, since I made several of the Monkey’s Fist knots, I made another pair of earrings!

I’ve been doing some experimenting with photography lately, putting my pieces on a white background instead of the medium gray.  I’m looking for ways to make the images “pop” more – in my recent work I’ve been using a lot of stones that have the same value as the background, and it makes the jewellery look dull.  “Value” in colour terms refers to how light or dark it is.  (To see check the value of your stone, stare at the photo with squinted eyes – if the stone disappears it has the same value as the background.)  In order for a photo to have visual interest, it has to be either lighter or darker than the background, otherwise the eyes see what’s there, but the brain registers “ho hum”.

It’s a bit more work to deal with a white background – inevitably, and even though I have a white balance setting on my camera – the raw photo comes out slightly grey.  Photoshop can adjust the balance it easily, but then I usually still have to do some extra clean up.  It’s a bit tricky to lighten the background enough to get rid of “noise” but not so much that the jewellery bleaches out.

From a print perspective, (putting on my editor hat for a moment), getting photos with white background is a godsend for layout.  I can plunk them down anywhere on a page and build text around them.  Or I can crop and put several images close together – something that isn’t possible when the jewellery is shot on a grey or staged background.   There are no distractions – you look at the jewellery and nothing else.

While they work for print and web, white backgrounds do *not* work well for jury photos.  I had the opportunity to sit in on a jury for a show recently (something I highly recommend BTW, it’s very educational), and I noticed that the photos with white backgrounds were always very jarring.  Backgrounds with a value of medium to dark (but not black) and *absolutely no props* worked best for jury photos.  Prop shots work well for Etsy, but are distracting in jury.

More photos: