Happy Hallowe'en

Dianne King Jewellery

I was recently contacted by Fife based jeweller Dianne King.  Dianne creates one-off pieces of jewellery, often sculptural in form, and largely works with silver and gold along with semi-precious and precious stones.
The photography brief was just to treat each piece sympathetically and show it to it's best, as well as capture some close-up details.
Here are a handful of images that I created for Dianne.

  www.dianneking.com

J D Fergusson Sculptures

A few images from a recent shoot of sculptures by J D Fergusson.  One of the images is destined for a large print advert in international art magazine, Apollo.  I'm interested to see what the designer will do with it.

Exploded View

I took this old lens apart because I'm in the process of making a focussing spot light that I can attach to a studio flash for still-life photography.  While it was apart I thought I'd try an "exploded" view shot, a lot of fun to do and something that I will be doing more of (and upping the complexity of).  People that have complained about how small the screws in an iPhone are should experience the metallic specks of dust that serve as grub screws in a lens like this.

Jewellery by Wendy Ramshaw

I recently photographed a lot of jewellery work by designer Wendy Ramshaw, these are some of my favourite images.

Photographed in my studio - 100mm focal length, 4 studio strobes, some composite editing

Personal Work

I don't generally show a lot of my personal work (although there is a very fine line between portfolio and personal work).  The images below are a selection from an entirely personal project, unrelated to what I photograph in my professional capacity.  I'd love to know what anyone thinks.

Plain White Backgrounds

A small selection of work from several recent shoots.  As you can see I have been asked to do a lot of images with plain truly white backgrounds.  It doesn't allow for much exercising of any creative photography muscle but does look good for on-line product display and catalogues.

Naomi Howarth Illustartions 

Megan Ferguson-Smyth Design

St. Judes Fabrics

Some Editing Required

I recently photographed this bottle of whisky as a portfolio piece, I'm happy with the results but it required an awful lot of editing, at the bottom of this post is a before/after shot so you can see just how much (and to show that advertising images don't generally come straight out of camera).
It made me think about the increasing trend of businesses using social media to advertise.  If a company needs images for social media and web advertising only then lot of time could be saved at the editing stage.  It is a lot easier to "clean" an image for a final web output of say 800 pixels then it is if it needs to stand up to the scrutiny of  a poster sized print.
I recently read an article about how the commercial photography sector is set to grow as companies commission more shoots in order to keep their online presence fresh and thus compete with each other.  They could certainly make their budgets go further (and provide more frequent work to photographers) by commissioning images that only need be <1000 pixels @72dpi.

I hope you like the final image; there will be no opportunity to re-shoot it as I'm now going to drink the contents.

www.wvephotography.com

Photography of Art: the process

The photography of art (art reproduction photography) is all about capturing an honest image.  Whereas most photography that is designed for consumption (marketing, advertising etc) just needs an aesthetically pleasing or effective image, art reproduction needs an accurate image.  I will lay out here the various aspects of capturing an image that need to be considered when photographing artwork.  This short guide largely assumes we are talking about a painting or similar where the subject is relatively two-dimensional and flat.  Art sculptures, installations etc are a completely different animal..... Continue reading

Choices, Choices..

I recently took the following image and when it came to the editing stage I was having a play around in Adobe Camera Raw (processing software).  I found several equally valid but completely (completely might be an exaggeration) different ways to edit the image, all of which I liked.  I finally settled on some changes and then did all the usual cleaning up of the image in Photoshop; the final image can be seen immediately below.

I have also included this image to show some possible alternative ways that the final image could have been edited.   It just goes to show, there isn't always a single correct or obvious way to edit in post. Also, you may notice there isn't always just one correct white balance setting.

I'll be posting an article about art reproduction photography in a couple of days where, conversely, I'll talk about photographing subjects where there certainly is only one correct white balance value and editing solution.

www.wvephotography.com

SMOKIN'

What can one image say? This one, hopefully, has a simple message - chillies are hot.  A composite image made from 7 individual images.
www.wvephotography.com

Mona Lisa Mosaic

I photograph a lot of artwork, paintings etc for galleries and private clients and although I generally like to post images of work that I've done on this blog I haven't posted art reproduction images before.  This is mainly due to the fact that the work is about accurately reproducing the artwork and the photography process involves no creative element.  However, in an attempt to show the volume of art that I photograph in an interesting way (and because I was messing around in Photoshop) I have made a mosaic of the Mona Lisa (chosen purely for it's notoriety) out of images of pieces of art that I have photographed.

Back on the blog

I've been very bad at keeping this blog regularly updated but will now try harder to achieve the little and often goal.  However, for now, I need to bring this up to date so am posting a selection of work from the past few months.

Here's a specially commissioned kilt pin made by Laing the Jeweller.

And while we're are on the subject; images from the interior of Laing's Boutique.

Recent Work: Objects

These are some images from recent photo shoots for Edinburgh's The Scottish Gallery.  The range of objects I've been shooting has been huge, as represented by the four very different items shown here.  I was asked to add no frills, just simple images that show the products as they are.

Recent Work: Jewellery

A few of my favourite images from several jewellery shoots for websites and catalogues that I've done recently. The brief is usually very simple; unfussy, honest images with a plain background.

RSPB Nature of Scotland Awards

I recently shot the RSPB Nature of Scotland Awards at Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel.  The inaugural event was set up to recognise and reward excellence in conservation and outstanding contribution to preservation. You can read more about the event and it's aims here as well as find out about the winners and Scottish conservation in general.
From a photography point of view the event provided the usual challenges of mixed lighting, dark environments and having many elements to cover.  The green LED backdrop on the stage was particularly troublesome as it had a refresh rate slower than my camera's shutter speed.  As far as a human eye was concerned it looked constantly on but to a camera that was capturing images at 125th of a second it appeared to blink, i.e - looked turned off in some images. Despite that and the inability to use a flashgun at any point I thoroughly enjoyed capturing the story of the evening.