Pearl images

A few weeks ago I was also asked to duplicate an image of pearls that I had sourced online. I searched through Pinterest.com but couldn't come up with something I liked so I searched through Google Images and came across the image at left comprised of both pearls and wedding bands.

I gathered the necessary items but try as I may I could not come across two matching wedding bands so I decided to come up with an alternative, a band and an engagement ring. The final result is the image pictured at the lower left.

Creating it was fairly straightforward. I started by going outside in a shady area to give me nice evenly diffused light. I arranged the elements on a small table covered by a tablecloth and set out to capture them.

My biggest challenge was trying to get both items into acceptable focus. I started off shooting at f2.8 and focusing on the pearls as this was a pearl assignment but the rings ended up totally soft. I reversed it and focused on the rings but the result remained the same just this time on the pearls.

After taking half a dozen shots I finally ended up shooting at f8.0 but zoomed in fully with my 28-70mm lens and focused on the rings. The result is as displayed on the left, both the rings and front section of the pearls are acceptably in focus resulting in what I believe is quite a nice looking duplicate.