Jewelry Photography: White on White

Video Transcript

"Hi. Michael Seto here. In this clip we're going to talk about shooting a white piece of jewelry on a white background. White on white is often one of the most challenging to shoot for a photographer because you're trying to get he background completely white and yet your subject is white. So how do you differentiate between the two and bring out the subject from the background without having it blend in? So, we're going a jewelry shoot today. We're shooting a white necklace for Lyndsay Colbus and what we're going to make sure we want to do here again, we've got the plexi-glass with light under it and we're going to light that up. What you're, it takes a little bit of trial and error to get this just right. You really want to expose for the background to make sure it's white so you're not adjust your aperture or your shutter speed to get that white. Then what often comes in handy is something like this. It's called the gobo in the business, a go between. Something that goes between the light and your subject. In this case I'm just putting a piece of what's called a flag, but it's really just a piece of paper here to block a little bit of the light from falling onto the piece of jewelry. So that way you're getting a little less light on the jewelry, you're going to begin to see the detail. It's not going to be perfectly white but it will be separated from the white background which is the objective here. So, again, when shooting white on white, a very tough and challenging situation, you really want to expose for the background to get that white and then adjust the light falling on your jewelry or your subject to make sure you're bringing out the detail and the texture in that. So, tough situation, but this way you should be able to get the shot accomplished."