I don’t know about you, but before I started writing beading books, I hadn’t really thought that much about the photos in them. Of course I have admired the beautiful photos in the large collection of beading books that I’ve acquired over the years, but I had limited understanding of what goes into each photo to make the beadwork look as stunning as it does. I’m just home from a trip to Exeter to work with the wonderful photographer, Jonathon Bosley, and Vivienne Wells of Vivebooks on the photography and videos for my upcoming books, ‘A Beaded Christmas’ and I thought it might be interesting to share with you some of the incredible time and effort that goes into getting the perfect shot.
I’ve been trying to take photos of my own beadwork for many years now – ever since I set up my first website. Any online platform for selling beadwork and every competition I have ever entered requires a photo. I’ve found that doing justice to the beads through the camera lens is a surprisingly tricky job and one that I don’t think I’ve mastered yet. Just think about the technical basics…the photo needs to be in focus and well-lit for starters. This sounds simple enough, but beads are so tiny and as a result, a lot of beadwork is also small. On the plus side it doesn’t normally move, so that helps with good focus, but getting in close enough to the work to allow it to be seen can prove challenging for some cameras that are more used to pointing at much larger objects or scenes. Of course the professional equipment includes clever things like ‘macro’ lenses that are designed specifically for shooting small objects at very close range. A lot of digital cameras these days have some kind of macro setting, so that can help to tell the camera that it should be expecting to focus on a close range.
Lighting is a whole other issue and incredibly tricky when it comes to beads. A lot of beads are made from glass and some, like silver lined beads, can be incredibly reflective. After all, it is often this shiny finish that attracts all of us magpie type beaders, but it plays havoc with the camera. If you try to use a normal flash, the reflection can be so great that the beads appear over-exposed and painfully shiny while other elements of the photo sit in huge contrast. If you don’t use a flash, then perhaps the photo ends up under-exposed and dark. Photographing in natural daylight tends to be best, but again, a very sunny day can lead to the beads appearing too highly reflected. Once again, a professional camera has so many settings that can be altered to allow more or less natural light into the camera and help to overcome some of these problems. Everyday digital cameras also have some different light settings these days, so I’ve found it pays to play around and photograph the same beadwork with different exposure settings and then see what looks best. In my case, it’s still all trial and error!
Beyond the basic technicalities, the photo has to convey what the beadwork is and make it look attractive enough that people will want to buy it or judges want to see it in the final rounds of a competition. This is no easy task…does a necklace look better lying flat on a white background or worn upon a model? One encourages the full focus onto the beadwork, but the other gives the necklace a sense of scale and wearability.
This most recent bead photo shoot is the third I have done, the second time I have worked with Jonathon and in all cases I’ve realised how important it is to have a photographer who cares about the subject matter. Jonathon has always been very good at talking to me about what the beadwork wants to show – is it supposed to be a ‘technical’ shot that readers are going to use as a reference while they are following my instructions, or a ‘stylised’ shot that might end up as a full page spread to show the beauty (hopefully!) of my work? Then of course we have to consider the likely final destination of the photo from the editor’s perspective: is it going to be a very small image that might be sat inside a ‘box’ or a larger image that bleeds into the text around it (in which case the background needs to be perfectly white so that the image edges won’t show in the text) or perhaps a full page spread where scale is important? You would not believe the number of takes it sometimes requires to get the final shot. The set up process can be painstaking, down to gently pushing a length of chain to sit in just the right position. Then the photo is taken, usually with a few different exposures to see which will work. It is immediately transferred to a computer screen for close scrutiny and usually we all end up debating the most minute points, like whether a length of chain looks too much like the head of a snake to be acceptable! This very often results in a few adjustments to the layout and another set of photos. It never ceases to amaze me what a difference it can make to move an object or an element of the beadwork just half a centimetre – suddenly a ‘good’ photo can become ‘amazing’ as the lens captures the composition slightly differently.
Before I started work on this, I would never have believed how exhausting I would find a day-long photography session. After all, I’m not the one taking the photos, just passing over the beadwork, maybe answering some questions and then sitting back while the photographer does all the clever stuff, so goodness knows how tiring it is being the photographer! I feel very fortunate to have always worked with excellent photographers who are passionate about what they do, sympathetic to my beadwork and most of all, good fun! If you’re going to spend ten hours (as we did last Thursday!) with someone in a studio, then you really want to get on well with them! So I’m going to say a huge and heartfelt thank you to Jonathon Bosley for all his hard work and to Vivienne for organising all of this. I’m really pleased with the resulting shots and can’t wait to share them with everyone, so here’s just a tiny taster at the top of this article. Watch this space for more!
