Sometimes I’m asked to picture jewellery of my wife, jewellery designer Yvonne de Wit (Instagram@ @yvonnedewitjewelry). Here a few of the professional photo-models I was picturing for other purposes, who were willing to showcase some of het jewellery. It’s all Yvonne’s own design and it is genuine handmade (from melting Sterling silver pellets and other metals to the finishing touch)
Models shown below are Anette, Sheila, Eveline, Dorothy and Maryam (respectively from France, Malawi and Kenya)
In the past few years I’ve worked with many known and lesser known photo models. Some have quite an attitude and others are more modest but then; aren’t we all different?
Some of them I could persuade for an additional short session with jewellery of my wife Yvonne (Instagram: @yvonnedewitjewelry).
Out of gratitude to my wife and those models (from Kenya, Malawi, Europe and South Africa) here a series in black and white.
Amazing; reading 200 yr old books (Maison Rustique from France & ‘Mechanische Technologie’ -[Mechanical Technology]- from Holland) and realising that basic principles haven’t changed. Even that people are ‘re-inventing the wheel’. Maison Rustique for example describes in detail how to grow (organically) veggies and how to process them including distilling essences from herbs, etc.; knowledge that repeats itself by modern garden gurus as if their own…. (picture: ‘Mechanische Technologie’).
The Dutch have the expression “Living like a God in France”. Well…. this Dutchman lives like a God in Stanford, South Africa.
During our travels in the past we always try to collect souvenirs. Sometimes these are just stones, sometimes genuine crafts or art. And we never went into a souvenir shop. If we bought something we had to like/love it and it had to be made by an artist on the spot. We’ve never been in Peru (South America is still largely to be discovered by us) but we met once in France an ceramist from this country working in the traditional way including wood-fired ovens scattered around his house somewhere in rural Burgondy, high in the mountains above the original French capital Cluny. And that is where we bought this mask and forgot in the meantime the meaning of it and also the name of the artist …..
We played a bit in Photoshop with brightness, exposures and styles to add some ‘mystery’.
Herman van Bon Photography 