rocksbox - fine jewelry product photography

These rocks are looking fine!

I’ve had the joy of working with Rocksbox over the last few years and they remain one of my most dear clients. Rocksbox stared out as a subscription box for fashion-forward young professionals, but recently they’ve made an addition to their box of bling! To my excitement, Rocksbox has entered the luxury jewelry scene by partnering with Zales, Jared, and Kay Jewlers to offer select pieces for rental and purchase. Much excite!

This photoshoot was a new adventure, not only for Rocksbox, but for myself.

As amazing and exciting as it is to work with glittering, bona fide jewels (diamonds and sapphires, oh my), it comes with some additional challenges.

In general, photographing any jewelry comes with a set of challenges all of its own. For one, it’s tiny and delicate which makes it difficult to style. Two, forget trying to keep it 100% clean of dust, finger prints and smudges…even with gloves. Finally, reflections….need I say more?

However, with costume or demi-fine jewelry, we have some tools at our disposal. Most importantly, we usually get samples that are sacrificed for the greater good. Meaning, we can use sticky substances to help position difficult pieces, we can remove or bend parts that are in the way, and there isn’t any liability if there’s accidental damage.

*Side note: I’ve actually helped catch problematic designs before they’ve gone to market. The jeweler gets the chance to make adjustments, and no one’s the wiser!

The bad news, those additional challenges I spoke of earlier? Well, there are no sacrificial pieces for fine jewelry.

Well, kind of. For some of the pieces that were available for rent and purchase, we had stand-ins that were cubic zirconium dups. Still super sparkly, but no one’s loosing their job or going into debt if the unthinkable happens.

Although, about half of the pieces were unique, pre-owned treasures. So, no dups. This meant no sticky substances like wax or tack as it’s hard to clean out, and you can’t sell a piece of fine jewelry with wax stuck to it. It might dull the sparkle, duh! 😜 And, obviously, absolutely no manipulating or removing parts of the jewelry. Really, this went for the cubic zirconium versions too.

Luckily, we managed just fine. We got creative with jewelry placement, and the camera angles we used. For a couple shots, I got really lucky and gravity worked with me just long enough to capture an image.