Jewelry designed by the Danish designer Ole Lynggaard, on a piece of lava rock from the Etna vulcano on Sicily, Italy.
I wanted to show the beauty of the flower against a rough contrasting background and make the link between gold ore from the earth and gold processed into jewelry.
The challenge here was to make the middle with the diamond bright and attractive, to avoid specular reflections and burned out area's in the highly reflective and curved petals, and at the same time show the structure in the petals, so maintain enough details and shadow.
I put up a halogen light reflecting in an umbrella and shining through a white shower curtain, to get a very soft light from above, like a softbox.
To maintain the structure in the petals I surrounded the setup with black velvet, all around, approx. 50 cm high, to prevent the light from reflecting everywhere and eliminating the subtle shadows.
Editing : only crop, sharpen and save for web.
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Very nice. I think the background is lava rock but I could be way off. I like that idea of the extremes in textures (yet gold comes from a rock of sorts so it is a fitting kind of background). But it isn't quite clear from this photo. It might just be a black towel, which I don't like. There could be a teeny bit more light on the lower petal to the immediate left of the frame. The shadow is good for developing the form but it is bit too dark and actually cuts off some of the form.
Only improvement I could see would be to bring a little --- just a little --- light to the leaf on the left. As it is, it fades into the rock background. Very nice image for this category. 9.
I like the fact that i can see that there is a though behind this shot. The way you placed the necklass...Angle and view point is really good, as are contrast.
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