My Favorite Piece of Jewelry

Like any other girl I love anything that shines and sparkles.

Take a look at this baby ...

That my friends, is my oh-so-freakin-awesome engagement ring. My fiance and I designed it ourselves after searching high and low for the right ring. My biggest concern was that the main stone had to be set low because I am pretty accident prone and didn't want to worry a lot about knocking out the sparkle (I still worry everyday). Along the same lines of protecting the center stone we wanted a secure setting and this pretty 4-prong basket setting seemed indestructible. We figured if the setting was somehow compromised I'd probably lose my finger in the process (yes this disturbing visual allows me to sleep at night).

Initially I thought I'd be happy with just a solitaire but the fiance, Nick, insisted it needed some extra bling in the form of side stones. We saw all kinds of variations of side stones from pear shaped to hearts to pave but finally settled on 5 smaller prong set round stones on each side. (If you count up all the stones we get my favorite number 11!)

Enough about the ring itself ... Did you know that taking pictures of a diamond, in all of its sparkling glory, is difficult? I played around with my digicam and figured it out. My camera is a Canon PowerShot SD300 and to get the pictures above I used the folllowing settings ...

• Digital Macro (tulip with a "D")
• You can leave it on AWB (autobalance) or switch around to other settings (Day Light, Cloudy, etc.) to get the true coloring right.
• ISO Speed - I set it at the highest, 400.
• You can take the picture in color or use other settings like B&W or Sepia - prefer to do B&W/Sepia right on the camera rather than in Photoshop.
• Also NO flash - flash will cause your ring to catch more light and you'll end up with a blur if you use the settings I recommended flash shouldn't go off.