5 Tips For Photographing Your Jewellery

1. Choose your style and stay consistent

Creating a style to adhere to when photographing your jewellery will make a huge difference to the overall look of your brand and jewellery.

The composition of your shots ultimately creates your style. This includes backdrop, props, colours and filters - if you choose to use them.

Think about what you want your jewellery to reflect and what style you want to have. For example, beach chic? bohemian? Classic and elegant? Fun and bold?

Everything down to what you lay your jewellery on contributes to creating a style.

Choose a colour theme and stick to it. Having images that look consistent in their colours creates a lovely and professional portfolio (especially for Instagram and platforms like Etsy). Even if your jewellery ranges in colour, the rest of the shot can keep the theme. 

Experiment with different backgrounds - wood, slate, fabric etc and then choose one or two that you would like to use. Try to stick to these, specifically for your product shots as the product image is the main contributing factor that will appeal to your customers, resulting in them purchasing from you.

If using props, ensure they too have a theme and use them throughout each shot. Maybe a shell here and there, or a branch to lay your jewellery on or even gemstones scattered about. This can help to create a really beautiful and dynamic image.

It is important to remember to try and ensure that the background and props do not distract from the piece of jewellery itself. 

3. Think About Context

Having images that show your jewellery in context (such as being worn or next to something that helps to determine its size), can be very helpful in determining whether the customer wishes to purchase from you. It also helps your jewellery to stand out from others.

Context shots can be additional photographs to the main product photos however, it is still important that these photographs are the best they can be to ensure you don't risk them having a negative effect on the main image.

Great context shots can also be incredibly effective for eye-catching adverts or as part of your displays at shows and fairs. 

We have found that the best indicator of the size as well as how it looks when worn is the human body. You can model the jewellery yourself for certain pieces such as rings and bracelets, but others may prove more difficult - unless you are a master of selfies of course!

If you decide to use a model, try to have the main focus as your jewellery and the model as part of the background. This can be tricky but more close-up shots help to achieve this or shots with the model looking away are equally as effective.

Context is also great if the piece can be worn in a number of ways! And remember to try and make your context shots fit in with your style (See Tip 1). 

4. Consider your angle

Jewellery is particularly hard to photograph - there are always elements that the camera just won't pick up. For example, certain gemstones such as labradorite and rainbow moonstone can have beautiful blue flashes that only show at specific angles and in certain lights. 

Whilst you want to capture as many of the wonderful elements of your jewellery as you can, it is important to consider the angle of your shot. You don't want a photograph where you can see the flash of a gemstone but you can't tell what the piece of jewellery looks like as a whole.  

Angles are also important to add depth to your jewellery as well as helping to show it's true size. For example, a ring can look completely different from directly above than what it does from the side. Adding depth is also a great way for the customer to see exactly how bulbous gemstones are in your jewellery designs. This can take some experimenting with slight variations of lower or higher-angled shots. 

When making your jewellery, try to keep in mind the photography process after. For example, take a look at the stone you are setting and see which way up it works best for how you envision the finished piece sitting in the photograph. 

Also, when taking the photo try to look at your jewellery like you have never seen it before! This can be extremely difficult, but it will help you to decide which angle shows your design best. Whilst you may like the way a close-up or side-angle shot looks, it may not show enough of the design for someone to decide that they want to buy it. 

5. Don't be afraid to edit what needs editing

Sometimes it is easy to forget about one thing whilst focusing on another, leaving you with what could be the perfect shot but with something not quite right. Luckily there are so many great editing tools that can help, and that fit all budgets.

However, if you choose to edit your photographs it is really important to keep a true representation of your jewellery. Keeping your jewellery close by whilst editing is a great way to compare and ensure the image is accurate.

There are many options when it comes to editing software. If, again you have the budget to invest or already have a programme like Photoshop then these are great for targeting specific areas of a photo. Alternatively, there are many free or lower-budget online editing software and apps for your phone (Afterlight - is a great editing app for mobile).

Elements that can be edited to help create a more professional look include brightness (which helps to adjust lighting), focus (as mentioned in tip 2), sharpness, shadows, highlights and contrast. Instagram's editing feature have all of these options!

Things to look out for in case of over-editing are things like adding a heavy filter, high-saturating the image or over-fading the image.  

If you have more advanced editing software then you could also try taking out or de-saturating specific colours that have leaked or been reflected into the photo from the surrounding environment. For example, when shooting silver, we often find that it reflects a lot of yellow. Photoshop enables us to specifically take the yellow out of the metal to give a more true silver colour.