Ringing

Recently one of my friends gave me the honor of taking a few photos of him and his new fiancée to announce their engagement. It wasn’t a formal session like the family portraits I do for clients in the area, but just a quick trip down to the OSU campus just to get some nicer-than-iPhone photos that they could share with friends and family. I had an idea in mind involving some shots with the campus Christmas in the background, but that would only work if the lights were turned on–which I had really no way of knowing until we got there. I was prepared with some backup though, in the form of a half dozen Nanlite Pavotubes, two tripods, and the metal light holders my brother Tom welded for me earlier in the year. I also brought a couple of external flashes just to be safe, and of course my D750 and a handful of lenses all stuffed into a large backpack.

It’s a good thing I brought my lighting gear. I got to campus before the couple, and quickly realized that the whole location was nearly unusable. Nothing I thought about in advance would work because none of the Christmas lights were turned on, and the only other sources of light were basically just some street lights and a couple bulbs on the exterior of a few buildings. No matter though: the show, or the session, as it were, must go on! I set up the five-point star pattern on one tripod, a single light on another tripod, and got to work planning out what I would do for their portraits. In the end it worked out pretty well all things considered, and the Pavotubes were more than capable for the task at hand. Once we got plenty of portrait shots I asked if I could take some close-ups of the ring, and they gladly agreed.

What you’re seeing here, then, is the woman’s hand resting on a metal table lit almost entirely with the five-star pattern courtesy of Tom. (Thanks Tom!) If you look closely at some of the metal, um, sticking-up things (I have no idea what they’re called) surrounding the diamond you can actually see the reflection of the light, and overall I was quite pleased with the even luminance they provided for her hand and the jewelry. I shot this handheld with my 105mm macro lens and the result, which you see here, is actually a composite of eight individual photos stacked together in Photoshop and then cleaned up a bit more in Lightroom. In the end I’m pretty happy with it, though it does make me want to study jewelry photography more to see what I could do to improve any similar shots in the future.

All in all this was a really fun experience and I’m so pleased to have had the opportunity to have done it. My friend and his fiancée were thrilled with the results, I got some photo practice, and I got a fun new image to add to my collection :)