Last Friday I went to see Circa: Beyond at Edinburgh’s Christmas. That’s totally not what this post is about but it was amazing so I had to mention it. After the show, I was attracted to the shiny things in Gecko Gallery‘s stall and instantly zeroed in on this gorgeous brass and labradorite ring. I’ve never owned a piece of brass jewellery before and usually only wear silver or white gold, so it’s a first for me and I ADORE it.
The photo was taken with my Polaroid macro lens (which might be my favourite photography toy ever) on my Sony Alpha A550. I set the ring on a little folding mirror with the back of the mirror propped up at right angles and set a silver reflector off to the side. When you’re shooting macro photos using a mirror, you need to clean the mirror very carefully!
I was hoping to shoot this with natural light but the weather wasn’t on my side today so I use the flash on my camera. I really need to get an off-camera flash but I tend to shoot either in natural light or with my studio lighting kit so I’ve never gotten around to it. It’s on my wishlist though.
I focused on the plane of the stone itself and the side of the setting because I wanted to capture the gorgeous texture within the labradorite. I intentionally over-exposed then pulled the darks and shadows down during processing, which enabled me to keep the softness throughout the entire image and hang on to the detail in the lighter parts of the photo.
I always shoot in RAW and process with Adobe Photoshop CC 2015, so it was easy to adjust the over-all vibrance and add a red tint to both the highlights and shadows, along with adjusting the white balance to warm things up and move the tint towards the purple end of the scale.
A funny little story about buying this ring. While I was trying it on, the lovely lady who was looking after the stall asked if I was a photographer. My brain-cogs instantly started whirring. Is it obvious that I’m a photographer? Do we have a specific look? Can people just tell? It turned out she recognised me specifically (that’s what having a tattoo on your face will do) rather than my general photographer-ness and had been following my work online since a friend of hers modelled for me a few years ago. Edinburgh is such a small place sometimes!
Prints of this photo are available at http://www.deviantart.com/print/38985640/
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