Gold Chains
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Shiny
Gold Chains.
This is an exploration into shooting jewellery more dynamically than a fixed set-up allows. Rather than photograph the chain from a distance, I moved a probe lens along its own surface, letting the lens do the travelling instead of the camera position. A probe lens reads as a single continuous sightline. A Cuban link chain has no flat plane for that line to cross, every link curves away from the last. The chain still gave the lens exactly what it needed: enough repeating form to hold a leading line through the frame, and enough surface for the lens's own distortion to bend that line rather than break it.
I set the chain across a brushed metal ground and worked the two surfaces against each other, the directional grain of the brushing holding against the mirror finish of the gold. The probe lens sits close enough that focus and reflection both had to be resolved in camera, not corrected afterwards. Backlighting the set low and warm, close to a sunset colour, pulled the eye into the frame along the same line the lens was already drawing. This is probe lens jewellery photography built to explore distortion as composition rather than just describe a surface, and the same interest in bending light around a small object runs through the refraction work in GVJ Refraction and the material studies for Rolex Certified Pre-Owned.
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