Rings for the Earth Exhibition

I have just seen the Rings for Planet Earth Exhibition at the Alternatives Gallery in Rome, Italy. Fourteen international artists made one or more rings centered around this theme. There was beauty for the eye and food for thought. Here is just a taste of what I saw.




Stefano Marchetti
“Nuvola Nera di Smog” – “Smog Cloud”
It is, it really is – a disgusting, black cloud on a precious gold round (ring).




Yu-Chun Chen
"Natura Morta" – “Still Life”
The graphic use on jewelry of the themes depicted in Still Life paintings, such as the symbols for life and death, brings to the wearer the awareness of the fragilità of our lives and the earth’s existence.


Rita Marcangelo
“The slow wasting away of the Earth Ring Series – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”
The rings have a strong visual impact and precisely express the artist’s thought.


Jantje Fleischhut
“Planet Earth - Little Botanics”
Even if the rings are partially made from found plastic objects, the overall effect is like a song of celebration and praise for the earth.





And, as always, I enjoyed visiting the gallery which has a fascinating display of work by jewelry artists.


Rita Marcangelo is co-founder and curator of the galleria. The Alternatives gallery is located in the center of historical Rome. If you are planning a trip to Rome I would encourage you to include a visit to the gallery in your scheedule.

Jewelry Photography III - Pixel Power

I think that this will be the last time that I write about the photographic aspects of presenting jewelry unless I run into some thing major with the photos. But I did want to talk about sizing in the sense of number of pixels per side.

The photos for my jewelry store on-line are 457 x 457 pixels. Flickr recommends a 500 x 500 pixel size. Etsy says that 800 x 800 or 1000 x 1000 pixels would be best so as to have good definition. I asked on a forum how others managed this re-working over and over again of the same photo. MetalRiot had this to say: "I make one high resolution version of each image and the resize them down as I need to. Do you use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements? There is a batch feature in those programs that will let you apply the same action to an entire folder of photos. So you could make them all 1000 x 1000 for etsy, and then run batches on them for the other sizes you need. That way you can do a large number at a time, and you can even walk away from the computer while Photoshop opens, resizes, and saves the new versions (into a new folder, so you still have the originals)."

So there it is. Do the curves - contrast and color correction - crop, size to 1000 x 1000 pixels and save as a RAW file. Down size as needed.






Here is the result of a little experiment I did. This is the very same photo of a set of earrings saved in the 4 different sizes. I know that I need new glasses but all of the photos seem to me to have a reasonably good definition. What is clearly visible is the change in the background and over-all color saturation as the pixels increase. Oops! Not much change visible at all. I assure you that the color change is very visible when I put the photos into a Word document and when I print them. I wanted to show you this but when I upload them to the blog the blogger program makes all of the photos 200 x 200 pixels (if I read the htm languare correctly).

I just checked the photos on Etsy and the large product photos seem to generally be 430 pixels per side, which is no where close to the recommended 800 or 1000. If this is true what is the sense of me worrying about sizing the originals larger? I hope that some kind reader can dissipate my confusion.

By the way, Bench Jewelers Conference & Expo announced the Passion Award jewelry competition.The entry form and photo submission is done online. The photos are to be jpeg or jpg format, no discussion about slides or digital origin and "the quality of the photo will NOT be taken in consideration while judging". They made it so easy that, even if each entry costs $35.00, they had my money for 2 entries within 30 minutes.

Jewelry Photography II

For my jewelry web site, Forms, Reinvented, I wanted to use good definition photos on a classic gradient background with defused lighting, not exactly floating the object but certainly making it the center of attention.

I feel that I made a huge investment of time and money to become as competent as I am in jewelry photography. I researched digital cameras, lenses, light tents, lighting systems and photography software. Then I bought the equipment and constructed the set-up. You can see my present set-up at flickr. Next came many hours learning to use the camera, adjusting the lighting, learning the basics of the software and doing trial after trial.

I have been pleased with the results and all was good with the world. The photos were nice and I would just transfer some over to the Etsy shop. But other Etsy sellers have brought to my attention that, frequently, on Etsy it is the background that sells the object. The background sets the atmosphere and explains to the client what the jewelry will do for them. Will these earrings be fun to wear? Will this bracelet startle my friends? Will I feel elegant wearing this pendant? Is this talisman magically powerful? Will this ring go with my green outfit?

I am including photos of one pair of earrings on different backgrounds to illustrate how the background can change one’s perception of the object. Every person will automatically choose the photo that they like best. So even if it is the same earring in all of the photos the background does make them more or less attractive to us and does influence one’s willingness to buy the jewelry.













Obviously this has complicated the organization of my shooting sessions as I need to change the background several times for each object and not all objects go well on the same backgrounds. Arrrrgh.