Photo Session: Backgrounds

I have been experimenting with lots of different backgrounds for my jewelry photos. Starting out originally with a wispy, white, drapey fabric that I used for every item, it became boring and predictable. I now like the idea of different backgrounds, but subtle backgrounds.

Antique books are great, both for cover binding (texture and patina) and inside illustrations (charming), but they can come off a little strong in the color arena. A couple of items in my shop now were photographed with book pages, illustrations, or music sheet backgrounds. They are very nice, but I just might like it better if the backgrounds were lighter - the same patterns, but lighter.

Searching through my old books, I found the most delightful nursery rhyme books with charming illustrations that I will try next. More on that in another post.

For now, I utilized Photoshop to do some textures in bunches of colors, as well as scanning parts of book pages, then screening them down to a soft pastel.

This photo is part of the 30 or so background pages I have printed so far on 11x17 paper. The larger size is great and the variety is awesome. It is such a wonderful thing to have a selection to use.

Some were scanned images from magazines - large photos of white-on-white plates and vases that printed very textury. I will update you on other things as I discover them and get them printed to use. In the meantime, I am replacing photos in my shop one-by-one. You can see a lot of the backgrounds in use here: http://gallerialinda.etsy.com