Trunk and trade shows can interfere with getting the exact merchandise editors want for photo shoots, but when the weather fails to cooperate, that adds a whole other level of frustration. And today—the day of our still-life photography for the April issue of JCK—things did not go as planned.

Turns out that Mother Nature and the Monday President’s Day holiday conspired to detain several packages that the JCK photo-shoot team needed for photography. So when our security guard met me at the office this morning to escort me to the shoot, I told him we needed to wait for several packages that UPS had failed to deliver yesterday. So, we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Still no packages, and I know that printing blank pages is not an option.

So I got UPS on the phone and a dispatcher told me that our delivery guy was on the street. I ran floor to floor in our building looking for him, and when that proved fruitless, I pounded the pavement outside our building until I found our guy—Sean, who is my favorite man today, btw—who dug through his truck until he found all the packages that were supposed to arrive yesterday. End of story? We’re on set now, with some cool diamond styles in front of our photographer’s camera lens.

Our UPS delivery guy Sean looking for my packages this morning

To be sure, photo shoots are not all glamour and glitz, and oftentimes the digging through rough to find the gems continues long after the jewelry production is complete.

Men’s jewelry on set today for the April issue of JCK. From left: yellow gold and diamond band by David Heston; white gold and diamond band by Stuller; silver and rough diamond pendant by Elena Kriegner; stingray, gold, and diamond bracelet by Noble by Bendtner; and diamond, gold, and cord cufflinks by Shamballa Jewels

The Style 360 blog is your editorial source for the newest jewelry, trends, market analysis, trade show insights, designer profiles, and more. 

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