Jewellery Editorial Photography – Air France Magazine

Buckley London contacted me with an urgent project for a magazine cover for Air France in flight magazine. They required a Lifestyle image for a jewellery set, Necklace, bracelet and earrings for the cover of a duty free in flight magazine.

So, what were the main things to keep in mind with this project?

Portrait orientation, for the cover.
Product centred in the lower area to allow for text clearance.
Soft feminine aesthetic.
Focus stacking on the jewellery to ensure super crisp visuals
Reflections minimised in shot
All blemishes and particles smoothed / stones brightened and Jewellery Colour corrected.

This was shot in three stages, using 3 different lighting setups with the two jewellery lighting setups being focused stacked to ensure clarity along the entirety of the product.

First of all, i feel i have to explain that this probably isn’t the simplest of ways to light a creative jewellery flatlay – however, due to restrictive circumstances, this was the only way to do it that day.

Setup 1 – Set lighting

This shot was designed to create an interest by lighting the lace low and hard to create shadow textures across the image whilst picking out the detail of the lace, and creating nice hard shadows under the product. This was shot with a single bare reflector flash, with a bounce board to take the edge off the jewellery shadowing.

Setup 2 – Lighting for Jewellery

This shot was lit with two large soft boxes, and plenty of white boards to block out as many reflections as possible and create a smooth and bright tone across the jewellery.

Setup 3 – Lighting for a Specular Highlight

I’m going to procures this section by saying that this wasn’t really necessary at all, but just a nice little addition to the process. Using a gridded beauty dish, low and aimed front right of the jewellery, i aimed a specular highlight to pop where the low lit areas on the jewellery had been. This brightens up the shot, and creates a sparkle on the metal. Notice how much things brings up the tone of the inside of the band.

Jewellery Editorial using combined lighting setups.

The last image here is the total combined shots, and fully retouched piece. You can see how the different elements pull together, the background, the jewellery and the specular highlight all combined to create a high end jewellery editorial.