Jewelry Photography

I have struggled with photographing my work for a really long time I'm not against using photographers in fact it would be great, but I always seem to be really late and I just don't have time to turn over the collection to a photographer. So I take pictures myself with varying degrees of success. I just found a site that give instruction on how to photograph your work but also how to retouch the photos so they look really close to Tiffany’s style of photos. I have to say I was skeptical but I downloaded the tutorial and it was very helpful in fact I would say my retouching skills definitely improved. So go get the free PDF and see how it goes. http://www.imagingprep.com/ they charge for there real tutorials I think I am going to get a subscription I'll let you know how it goes.

I've finished the piece with the extra long cabochons. Rose gold and rubies.

Mr. Ravi K Lashkery from Gemorex was very helpful at a recent meeting. I was attending the JA winter show and his booth had massive smooth emerald necklaces and a lot of unique cut stones and brioletts. He really was very knowledgeable and innovative. you can visit his web site to get an idea of the quality of his merchandise.

They also specilize is custom cut semi precious stones he showed me a few pieces they where working on for another client and I bought a few rose cut citrine, topaz and ruby as well as flat cut stones that are similar in style to the flat cut diamonds.

I recently got these custom made stone ring blanks in. Last June I had samples cut here in New York from rough I bought at a stone importer, most of the material I got was not very good. I thought rough was rough and the lapiderist could use whatever I gave them. I learned a lot from that experience. Buying rough is an art in and of it self and requires x-ray vision.
This is the specification drawing I did and the final stone ring blank I really like making the drawing. It required me to adjust every measurment based on the ring size. I did three sizes the lapiderist was right on the mark.

Robert Bently Has some very cool "faceted" stones. accually they are cut flat on two sides like a table cut and then on the third side the surface is fractured like it was hit with a hammer.I just met with Robert and his staff again this week at the JA winter show and the intresting thing is the cut of the stones is called mirror cut and the are cleaved along a natural cleave in the stone.

these great new cabs I had made they are 20 x 80 x 6 mm and I am fitting them into silver, gold and rose gold bezels with diamond or ruby accents.