Birthday Presents

When looking around in the house yesterday for something to blip because the weather outside was cold and grey, my mind turned towards my wife's jewellery, probably because her birthday looms large on my mind just now and I don't have the vaguest idea what to get her.

The pieces of jewellery that I chose to photograph were designed by Sheila Fleet, the Orkney designer whose original cottage industry is now a major player in the British jewellery world. Her range of collections is now so large that I had difficulty in identifying the three pieces I chose to put together. In photographing them on black velvet I quickly learnt some of the problems that photographers of jewellery must face and realise why they use complicated set-ups like light tents to control the reflections and highlights. My set-up was a lot more mundane. My light source was a north facing window on a dark and grey day and I used three pieces of whitish card around the items to control excessive reflections and highlights. I have chosen to present the items rather graphically shooting from directly above them and to remove clasps etc. in order to concentrate on the design elements. You are probably best to consider it as rather poor advertisement. for Sheila Fleet designs. Mind you I really like them and feel the designs are well worthy of a blip. The earring is from the Pentland collection and the two links are from a bracelet in the Runic Collection