Old Photographs and Fashion

I've been going through the huge pile of photographs in my den. To my horror some had bonded with the plastic film on those old "magnetic film" pages in a couple of albums. Fortunately the ones lost were mostly sightseeing pics. But 25-year-old pics of my children were starting to brown around the edges and the colors were fading and the deep darks were lightening. This is ironic because I worked for Kodak in the 1980's. So, my big project for this long and snowy winter has been to scan and fix photos that will soon be useless and nothing more than bits of paper.

Oddly enough, the old black and white baby pics of my grandmother (1898) and other family members were in better condition. The images were fairly clear, although they still required a bit of adjusting, mostly the shadows. Well, while looking through 115 years of photos, including tintypes (yes, those photos were actually on tin), I came across some very stylish ladies. Some I knew and some I didn't. Then I wondered what they might have worn as jewelry? (Or not, depending on the situation.)

The photo at the start of this post has a date of 1919. I have no idea of who she is (please, please mark names on the back of your photos, people!). This was probably a school graduation photo since she's all dressed in white. The only thing she's wearing is a flower corsage and a really big bow in her hair.

Fast forward to the 1920's. This lady appears to be wearing another corsage or maybe a fabric flower. (Fabric flowers are seen often in today's fashions.)



Now to the 1930's. Here's my grandmother wearing in a typical streamlined suit. Notice the the hat has a brooch or pin in it:

I got to thinking what she might have worn, so here's a typical pin (from "Vintagecostumejewelry"):

This reminds me of the color forcasts in previous posts.

This photo has absolutely nothing to do with jewelry but it's simply too cute not to post here (my mother, late 1920's, she's about 4 yrs. old):



Last but not least, for all the men reading this: be glad your baby photo didn't look like this: my grandfather is the baby, his brother is in...the dress. This was common among middle class families at the turn of the century.

(At least the older brother didn't have long curls like my other grandfather had to wear! He was still embarassed by that photo until the day he died. But he had really nice hair...)

Jewelry Photography Part 2: Edit!!

Last week we found out how Starving Artist Team members took their own photographs of their work. Three members came up with three different solutions. Frankly, I had meant to do just one post about photography but Tim of TJR Jewellery mentioned editing when he listed the equipment for his photo set up. So, let's take a quick look at how we get the image from the camera to a web site to be (hopefully) seen by lots of potential customers.

The image comes from the camera and goes to the computer by USB or memory cards, etc. Now we start to work our magic by editing the photo. Believe me, editing is an art by itself! There are many photo editing programs out there. Some are free: Picasa, GIMP, Photoscape, Paint.net, to name a few. Or you spend a bit and get Adobe's PhotoShop (professional "CS4" or "Elements"), Corel, Light Room, or others. No one program is perfect; it's a matter of personal preference and what the artist is looking to produce.

Now the fun begins. After "cropping" (cutting the photo down to size and removing any unnecessary elements) it's very important to get the right colors. You can see a difference between TJR's before:



And after:



As you can see, not only is the background lighter, but the cuff itself is a more natural silver color and more reflective.

Then the photo will be "re-sized" for the web. For instance, the photos here must be 215 "pixels" wide. So if you have an image 1200 pixels wide your image will get cropped down and you'll probably end up with just the empty space inside a necklace. Not good.

So, here's an example of wicked good editing. You can go from this...




to this without picking up a pair of pliers...





Just kidding! Here's what the photo looked like before editing (you can see the yellow fishing line I used to hang the earrings; I also had to retake the photo here to show the "before" so the light source direction is slightly different):



Editing is can be either be very simple or complicated depending on the photo you start with and what you want to finish with. I don't have enough time to explain all we do: playing with colors, light levels, cropping, re-sizing, etc. The software some members use can take more than a year to learn to use and get good results. My purpose for this post (and last Saturday's) was to give customers a bit of the basics so they can understand, and appreciate, some of what we SATeam members go through to create a piece and present it on the web.

Jewelry Photography Part 1

We've all seen and admired, the photographs of jewelry pieces featured on this blog. And you may be wondering how do they take such great photos? Quite frankly, that's something we struggle with every day except for the really rich members who can afford professional photographers for each piece they make...which means all of us take our own photos.

Good photographs are an absolute necessity to sell on the internet. The customer has to be able to see exactly what they want to buy. They don't want any "surprises" after opening their package when it arrives. Out-of-focus images, wrong colors, an image not showing parts of an item: all things affect sales. So let's see what makes a good photograph. Next week we'll look at what goes on after that photograph is taken from the camera before it's posted on a web site.

Here are three different solutions to the same problem from three members:

Lighting: How to get the right light to show off the piece as nicely as possible and not affect affect the colors? Haven't we all bought something in a store only to find the color is different in daylight? So, photographers need a light source that is near enough to daylight. Yes, there are "daylight" bulbs for those of us who don't have enough sun. And we need to aim it where we want it. And we need to control shadows. Details, details...

Here's a set up by ShinyAdornments
Her set up (red arrow not included) uses natural light:



And her results:



Here's a different one by Madame Magpie's Shiny Things



And her results (notice she uses a wine glass as a prop):




Here is a set up by TJRJewellery





And his result:

Background: How to show off all this lovely jewelry? How can we make it as appealing as possible and avoid the "Huh? Whazzat??" when the photo is posted on the net? As you can see each artist has their own way of solving the problem. Some use props like a floor tile with interesting texture or a wine glass or even nothing at all, BUT the final result is a beautiful image of their jewelry.


Camera: Do we need special cameras? Camera choices vary from artist to artist. What we do need is to learn how to use the camera we already have. If you have ever taken photos where things are out of focus you have probably wondered why. It's even harder to get very close to an object and keep it in focus. For that, we use the "macro" function of a camera. With macro we can shoot just inches from a piece and get the whole thing in sharp focus.

Here's some of TJR's choice of camera and equipment (in his own words):
- Current set up is a vintage Photogenic Machine Company Porta-Master 400 flash unit, a Canon EOS 20D, a Canon 100mm macro lens and a Manfrotto tripod with a ball head (to allow for camera rotation) - all were bought used (if you know someone who is into photography professionally or at an amateur level belonging to a camera club, you might be able to obtain some of their back up equipment at a reasonable price - the only equipment likely difficult to get cheaply will be the camera lens as they hold their values as they typically can be transferred from camera to camera.
- Camera directly attached to the flash unit using a PC sync cable, and I use the flash mode setting on my camera (I do not use the on camera flash for my photos).
- Camera set-up/settings I like to use: I shoot in manual mode, always manually focus the jewellery in the picture (to keep the area I want in focus), picture should take up 1/2 to 2/3 of viewing frame, take pictures in RAW format, use the camera timer to take the pictures, use f/13 for aperture, use shutter speed of 1/250 of a second, use ISO 100 (to avoid noise)
- Using a grey card for colour correction is very important - take a shot under your normal lighting set up with a grey card in the picture frame somewhere (you only need to use the grey card for the first photo you take). Import the photo to Photoshop and go to IMAGE -> ADJUSTMENT -> LEVELS. Click on the middle eye dropper to set the grey point, move the eye dropped over to the grey card and click on it (colour should instantly improve). Save this white balance adjustment (using the save button) and you can instantly correct all your other photos taken under the same lighting conditions by loading this white balance adjustment for all subsequent photos. You can further play with your white balance if you choose by adjusting the small triangles below the histogram/"input levels" graph.

As you can see, TJR's list is very complete and detailed for his needs.

Other equipment: One reason your pics may have been blurry was because the camera shook just a bit. So, we use a tripod to hold the camera as perfectly still as possible. See the list above for a very complete list of what TJR uses.

TJR mentioned photo editing above and that's what we'll be discussing next week.
(And yes, that's me taking a pic.)