Creative Ideas for Unique Wedding Ring Photography

Photography Tips  •  Wedding Photography

If you’ve ever wanted to spruce up your jewelry photography but weren’t sure exactly what to do, check out this video from wedding photographer Greg Moment. You won’t believe the effects he comes up with using super simple props and a pen light:

In the photography world, it’s easy to fall into the mindset that special effects need gear. In fact, there are countless tutorials out there demonstrating great techniques and effects–if you could only afford the right gear. So it’s refreshing to find a video that demonstrates not just a few cool techniques, but the creativity behind them. I mean, how many people would have thought to use a metal shoe horn as a reflector and a few forks for background lighting effects?

Shoe horn reflector

And while using foil to achieve bokeh is fairly well-known, have you ever seen paper clips being used for background effects?

Paper clips for background effects

And while Moment does use a decent macro lens, a somewhat pricey Dedolight Ledzilla Bi-color Onboard LED (that’s the fixture with the barn doors), and a Phottix Mitros+ TTL transceiver and flash, most of what he’s doing can be replicated without any fancy gear. (Well, you do need to have a macro lens for these particular effects.)

Photography Gear

• Nikon D3s
• Nikkor 105mm Macro Lens
• Ledzilla bicolor onboard LED
• 2 Phottix Mitros+ Flashes
• directional pen light

or most of these shots all you really need is a DSLR, a macro lens, and some way to direct your light just where you want it. With the exception of the “rain” shot, everything you saw here could be duplicated with simpler lighting sources (including a standard, non-extendable pen light).

Household Miscellany

• paperclips
• hair brush
• pen light
• foil
• colored plastic
• shoe horn
• forks
• spray bottle
• lighter
• colored cloth

While the end photos may or may not be to your taste, the core value of this video is in more than just a few cool techniques. The main take-away could easily be the rewards of outside the box thinking and the potentially amazing results that can stem from playing around with what you have on hand.