Product Photography - Clouds in the Studio

Jack Pickerill

Oct 4

2 min read

This week in the studio I’ve been working on jewellery photography with a sunset theme, having spotted multiple luxury campaigns in the wild recently that feature the sky, I thought it would be fun to see how I can apply my style to the theme.

The campaigns that drew me to this idea the most were the Cartier La Panthère stills and the Rolex launch from last year. Both have an aspirational quality to the set and feature lighting that replicates direct sunlight just before golden hour.

Given the current unpopularity of AI, I wanted to make this image as authentically ‘in camera’ as possible. The soullessness of ai generated imagery is pushing luxury marketing towards an authenticity at front and centre and a focus on showing the craft of the actual image behind the scenes of the shoot.

Jewellery Photography Studio Set Up

Having decided on a deep pink/purple sunset as a colour scheme, I needed a sky. Staying as true as possible to an authentic process, I decided to shoot this myself and use the final

print as the final backdrop.

Sunset cloud photograph I took for use as a backdrop

Jewellery Photography Props

To add more shape to the shot I balanced the ring on top of this crystal ball. The result gives the image more of a depth and form than a traditional horizon and allows for the sunset to be refracted back into the foreground of the image.

For the lighting I used a mixture of both hard and soft light, ensuring that I kept noticeable

hotspots in the image to achieve those glossy, sunlight-esque reflections in the jewellery.

Jewellery photography done right looks effortless, what you don't see in the final image is the years of lighting experience required to achieve a premium light in every image, the knowledge of what to retouch out and what to leave, and keep the final photograph true to the initial brief.

Jack Pickerill is a product photographer based in Manchester with a speciality in jewellery and luxury watches.

If you're a jewellery brand looking for some photography of your products, Teal Studios is a product photography studio shooting stills and video for campains, ecommerce and social.