Hang a Necklace for Jewelry Photography

Video Transcript

"Hi. Michael Seto here. In this clip, we're going to talk more about shooting a necklace and making it look natural. Now, we had talked in one of the other clips about a white-on-white necklace, long necklaces, short necklaces, and shooting them while they're laying flat. How do you style them; how do you approach it; what sort of angle? I talked about shooting sort of low, coming in focused on the pendant with the necklace tracing out the back. As well, I mentioned another way of shooting a necklace is you can shoot it down, you set it down on the floor and you mount the camera above it on a tripod and shoot down. And that way you get the real circular nature of the necklace. The third way to shoot a necklace is with the set up we've got here. And that's having the necklace hanging naturally. So, what we've got here; I've just got two of our third-hand instruments that I mentioned earlier. They're very handy for holding up go-bows or anything like that. And in this case, we're using it just to hold up the jewelry so it drapes like it would look when the person is wearing it. Little details are important. I put some paper in between the chain and the alligator clips here, just to protect the jewelry. You always want to make sure you are taking care of the jewelry that was entrusted to you as a photographer. Even though you are insured as a business, the last thing you want to do is damage your client's piece because often you are shooting a unique piece and they are showing that to clients and it's not yet manufactured. So again, taking care of the pieces are important. So here, really the third way to shoot a necklace; have it hanging naturally, and that way it looks the way it would on a person. Thanks for joining me for this segment of how to shoot jewelry. We talked about a lot of things. I'm a professional photographer based out of New York. I do a lot of jewelry work. If you have any questions on that or other aspects of photography, please visit my website, www.michaelseto.com. Thanks a lot, and have fun doing your photography."