Jon Claxton | Photography

Through the power of facebook I met jewelry artist Nikkol Rae Fletcher, who is 1-degree of separation from my friend Nikki Caldwell at Fluid Bloom Designs (www.fluidbloom.com).  Of course, as San Luis Obispo would have it, Nikkol and I end up knowing many other 1-degrees in town.  Anyway, Nikkol shot me a quick message after seeing some recent flower photos that I took for Nikki and she wanted to know if I would be interested in shooting some pics of her jewelry.  Of course, I can’t say that I’ve always dreamt of shooting jewelry, but after meeting up with Nikkol one fine Sunday afternoon, I quickly enjoyed the challenge of setting up a studio and dealing with all the lighting challenges that it brings.  You see, I only had two strobes, an umbrella, a bounce, and a soft box.  The challenge came when I began to notice reflections within Nikkol’s finely polished stones.  So, with thoughts of “MacGyver” dancing through my head, I quickly improvised, using almost half a role of papertowels, a plate of glass and some masking tape to build my product tent, and thus eliminate some nasty reflections from the umbrella, and the ceiling.  Nonetheless, I think everything turned out pretty good.  Not to mention Nikkol and I had a couple great laughs after stepping back and looking at what we created.  Nikkol if your reading this, “Yes, we should have taken a photo of the ridiculousness.”

You can find Nikkol’s jewelry in several stores within San Luis Obispo County, including Hand’s Gallery and many others.  I’ll be sure to re-post Nikkol’s website when it is up and running, but in the meantime, I leave you with my photoshop mosiac to enjoy the beauty of Nikkol’s artwork…..