Taking photos of glass beads and jewelry is challenging, and members of "Flaming Hot"  are commenting on the process. Some of them  think, like I do, that the process can also be frustrating, time consuming, and down right irritating. Thank goodness  for my great little digital camera, a Sony5.1 mega pixel – it saves me from complete despair regarding taking bead jewelry photos. It allows me to take the photos again, and again, and again . If I had to use a regular camera, I’d be broke from the costs of film and developing all my mistakes and bad photos ( I take about 10 or 15 photos of every finished piece of jewelry, just to end up with one shot that is even half-way decent.)

I’ve tried all types of lighting: indoors, in natural light, indoors in a "photo-booth", indoors under florescent lights, indoors in a "cool" shadow, outdoors in shade, or outdoors in sun. Generally for background I use a photographers paper that graduates from white to almost black. Some time I use plain white typing paper, handmade  white Japanese paper, or lately, for my etsy shop photos, I’ve been using a handmade paper fan, with other pieces of torn paper for contrast. Since I keep a photographic record of every piece of jewelry I create, that’s a LOT of photos to take, and retake, and retake. Last year I made more than 600 pieces – with all the retakes, that equals approximately 6,000 photographs.

Here’s my latest necklace, made with my glass beads in an assortment of spring green hollows and disks. I took about 30 pictures of  it, and only 4 shots  made it to the "maybe I’ll keep this photo" group. I’ll  use the photos to list the necklace on etsy, but I don’t think any of the group are good enough to use as a slide for a juried show.

  #1:This photo of the necklace is OK – I’ll use it on my web site, or for a second etsy picture.

I took this one indoors in my "photo cube" set-up, on the graduated background paper.

#2 This picture was taken outdoors in natural sunlight, on plain white paper. The colors are more accurate, but somehow the beads don’t sparkle, even in the sun.

#3 Also taken outdoors in natural sunlight, again on plain white paper, Its a slightly different angle that I like better – but not really too different from #2 above. The bead colors are a little washed out.

  #4 I’d use this shot for etsy. I think its more interesting, and it shows off my sterling silver signature clasp too. I wouldn’t use this for a jury photo, the background isn’t plain enough for that.

The necklace looks much better in person. 

Ah, shoot, I’m still learning how to take a jewelry photo.

Inspiration shows up on my doorstep in  different guises. The current muse is the fundraising gala for the Round Top Family Library. The fundraiser is very important, because the library is entirely dependent on donations. As I mentioned here,  giving a piece of my handmade jewelry raises more money than I could contribute in cash. Last year I donated a necklace to the silent auction, and it whipped up a nice sum for the pool. Meanwhile, though, I wore this necklace to the gala. (Jim made the scorpion, and I made the bead to look like a "rock"), During the evening, I got a lot of comments on how much people liked what I was wearing.   At the last minute we decided to donate it , and the auctioneer tucked it into the live auction at the end. Wow, it was a big hit, the bidding was heavy, and the scorpion necklace raised a lot of money for our precious library.

So this year, we’ve been invited to donate a "Big Ticket" item for the Live Auction. Instead of taking something from my regular inventory, Jim and I are making a piece just for the Auction. It needs to be a real knockout, since we want it to raise at least $1,000. We started hatching ideas a couple of weeks ago. We decided it will be a necklace, and it will have a combination of Jim’s metal work and my lampwork beads. We started by sketching ideas (my notebook on the left, Jim’s on the right.)

Jim made a centerpiece out of silver, with leaves and a ruby bud. I played around with some pearls and glass beads I already had on hand to see what colors we liked. In the process  I eliminated some of the choices ( its not going to be green pearls!).

I’ve been making hollow beads in different colors all week, and worked up this necklace, with some ruby red bubbles:

We like the necklace a lot, but it is just not that much of a knockout. So it will go into stock for our next show, and we are still working on something even more spectacular for the library.  We’re not quite finished with the final necklace, but we’ll post a picture of our creation here on my blog when its done. If you perchance love it, would like to own it, and have all the money you pay go to a very good cause, just let me know. I’m sure we can work out a way for you to be in on the bidding.