Sheila's Birthday

Yesterday was Sheila's birthday.  She had already opened one gift a few days before her birthday (a good pair of ear buds) but she had another one to open on her birthday.  

I had purchased a new ring for her...  the main stone is aquamarine (her birthstone) and it is surrounded by white sapphires...

Shooting photos of jewelry isn't something I do all that often.  I had forgotten how surprisingly difficult it is to get a sharp photo due to all the specular highlights reflecting off the jewelry.  To compound this primary difficulty, you need a lot of light coming from many directions which makes even more specular highlight reflections.  

Another problem I had with this particular photo is that a ring is quite small.  Since it is small, you need to try to get as close as possible which then results in a very shallow depth of field putting most of the ring out of focus.  I resolved that problem but the specular highlight issue is still a problem that I did not resolve all that well.  The ring is nice though and Sheila seems to like it a lot.

After Sheila opened her ring, she headed out to get a massage in town.  When she arrived back home, we made our way to Burlington for the day.  I'll write more about our time in Burlington in another blog entry.  All I'll say here for now is that our lunch was incredibly disappointing...