If you know me, you know I’m all about the bling. From my first meeting with my brides, I just have to take a peek at what they’re rockin’ (pun intended). But, on the wedding day, photographing the rings is a big part of telling a good story about the wedding details and knowing how to get the shot you and your clients will love is SO important.
For a while, I tried using my 50mm for ALL the details. While it’s an amazing lens for full detail combinations of shoes, invites, veils, jewelry, etc. , it can be a little too far away to capture the essence of the rings.
Personally, I LOVE photographing rings on the bouquet or at the tip of open-toed shoes. This sort of shot requires a macro lens. Now, if you’re not too familiar with the term macro lens, basically it means you can get closer to your subject and still have the lens focus than standard lenses.
A lot of photographers use the 100 or 105mm macro lens depending on if you’re Nikon or Canon to achieve awesome ring photos. I prefer to use my Tamron 28-75 2.8 Macro lens. Not only is is waaay smaller and lighter than it’s name-brand buddies, it lets me get within 13 inches of the ring which has worked beautifully for me. I also try and keep my aperture at 2.8 to make sure I get the entire ring and not just the face of the diamond.
Once you get the shot you want, then you have to move to post processing. A lot of times, especially when shooting the rings on flowers, you’ll get a color cast on the diamond. It’s always the goal to get clear, crisp and sparkly ring shots, so to achieve this I use the saturation brush in Lightroom to take down the saturation and create a clean and clear diamond no matter the background. < This is a serious life saver if you run into strong colors surrounding your rings.
There you have it! Now go shoot some rings this year!
xoxo Anastasia