I shot, edited and watermarked these photos of jewelry, stationary, and more and used them to represent the products I was selling in the Fifth Kingdom Works online shop. I fashioned a rudimentary lightbox/shooting area and positioned two softboxes to get the uniform lighting I wanted. Some of the items that had meticulous, tiny details required the use of a macro lens, and to ensure the quality and clarity of my shots I stabilized the camera on a monopod and used a remote trigger to shoot, as to avoid any unnecessary vibrations in the camera while using the high magnification lens. I also used a ring light to shoot some of the items with shiny glass or reflective polished metal surfaces -- it has a nicer reflection and sheds light evenly over small details. After editing and watermarking with the Fifth Kingdom Works logo in Adobe Lightroom, these were ready to be uploaded to the online shop and pushed through our social media accounts: facebook, twitter, tumblr and instagram.
These photos represent many months of work I spent sourcing and creating mushroom-themed items for Fifth Kingdom Works. I struggled to find mushroom pendants/charms suitable for all of the jewelry and head/hair accessories I had in mind... so I made my own! A few were sculpted with Precious Metal Clay and fired, but most of the time, polymer clay or resin was much more suitable for my purposes. Our mushroom terrarium picks (sculpted mushrooms intended to be placed in a terrarium or potted plant) underwent serious quality testing to ensure durability, water resistance, and color/light fastness. In the end, all polymer clay pieces were coated with resin to protect them; and I couldn't resist mixing some of the resin with tiny grains of opal I had acquired, which gave the mushrooms beautiful specks of iridescence in the sunlight.
To see more photos and read more about my involvement with Fifth Kingdom Works, click the button below.