Does anyone have suggestions on how to support a silver cuff bracelet
while photographing it. I use a cloud dome now with four 5500 K
lights, a tripod and fairly good camera. I have gotten good results
supporting the bracelet with museum wax, but it has to be on a hard
surface and any hard material I find is light in color. I would like
to be able to support it in such a way that you don’t see any of the
support and have a darker softer background. Any ideas are welcomed.
You can look at my website http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/ep7zmx
to see what I am doing right now. These pictures cover about 10
years, two different cameras, and several support methods. Thanks in
advance for any suggestions. Rob
The photographer I was using (who has retired) would stick it or grab
it or whatever and photoshop the holder out. In the old days we would
spend a lot of time trying to get things in the right position and
then the lights would warm the sticky wax and things would slump.
There were lots of problems. But you could even clamp the bracelet in
air and photoshop out the holder.
I’ve done similar things to your bracelet shots by tying a bit of
fishing line to some sort of overhead point, so that the bracelet is
held up by the fishing line. Then just retouch it out in photoshop.
As long as you’re in photoshop, I’d remove all your backgrounds, and
replace them with simple flat white. Since the website is pure
white, I’d make the image backgrounds match.
When I want to support something for a photo. Black granite or black
tile will work fine. A couple drops of super glue will hold it in
place for the shot then acetone will remove any super glue from the
piece.
I usually use a thin clear plastic sheet - thick enough to have some
strength when curved.
Cut it into a rectangular shape long enough so that corners of sheet
are away from bangle when photographing, and roll into arm shape.
Make the plastic sheet not wide enough to complete the roll - so is
almost cuff shaped in itself, and the roll will stand on the edges.
These edges are easily photo-shoped out afterwards and as sheet is
see through you end up with a nice clean image of bangle standing
upright without any obvious stand showing.
If you cover a piece of foamcore, or a small cork bulletin board,
with dark velvet you can push thumbtacks into the backing through the
fabric and use the heads to anchor the wax. You can either trim down
the heads or paint them to match the velvet.
I would like to be able to support it in such a way that you don't
see any of the support and have a darker softer background. Any
ideas are welcomed.
Support a sheet of glass or clear plexiglass a couple inches up off
your work surface. It can sit on a sheet of colored paper, or often
better, graduated color (such as black on top, white on the bottom,
with the zone graduating from one to the other being of a scale that
it can give a depth of the shadows behind the piece, ie the light
zone at the bottom of the photo behind the work looks like forground,
the dark above looks like receeding background. For a bracelet sized
item, that graduated zone will be maybe over a couple inches. Behind
the top of the bracelet, you’ll see dark grading to black just above
the bracelet, while at the bottom of the image, light grading to
white just below, which will then look like in front of the item. You
cover the glass or plexiglass with matte frosted mylar drafting film.
This stuff is not quite transparent, will kill any reflections from
the glass or plexiglass, and will blur and diffuse the image of that
background graduated paper, so it can be quite easily just printed
out on any decent printer. It will appear much smoother through the
frosted mylar than it actually needs to be. Make sure that the mylar
film is very clean and pristine, and because it’s very translucent
and matte (no reflections), it disappears in the image, taking with
it any clear indication in the image that there is even a support
surface at all. Your work then looks like it’s floating in the air,
and the diffuse graduated shadow below/behind it gives the image the
look of depth and volume while offering no distractions from the
work itself. If there is a downside to this, it is that with no
visible support or “environment”, it can make it difficult to see
what the scale or size of the work is, unless it’s function (cuff
bracelet, ring, etc.) makes that obvious.
Support a sheet of glass or clear plexiglass a couple inches up
off your work surface.
This is an interesting thread, but (Peter) I’m not quite clear on
how your system would be set up. Do you have photos you can post?
I’m sure others would appreciate the clarification, and learn from
it.