Shooting photos of products; jewelry, glass, metals and other reflective surfaces is a true study in absolute control of light and shadow. These photos are the most difficult to produce. Often, a single studio set up will require an entire day. The studio must be completely dark so that any light source or reflection can be identified and eliminated or enhanced. Often a light source is bounced off of a different sort of reflective surface to diffuse or to harden the light on the subject. Sometimes it may take hours to locate a single spot or reflection that is unwanted and eliminate it. The images found below are each a study in light and shadow. There are many different kinds of reflective surfaces here and each one was extremely time consuming to produce. Texture is all important. Depth, dimension and framing all play an integral part in the creation of such images. This is perhaps the single most challenging sort of photography. If the image is not very, very good in the first place, no amount of photo shop enhancements will ever make it good.
