Yearning for Yellow: The Beauty of a Yellow Diamond

Welcome to another installment of the Gemstone Photography Series! In today’s post, we’ll soak in every beam of this vibrant, beautiful gem—the yellow diamond. Learn with us as we demonstrate to you how to photograph this ray of light with the GemLightbox Macro. Follow along!

What is a Yellow Diamond?

Yellow diamonds are diamonds with yellow bodycolor. The trace amount of nitrogen in its crystal structure gives this beauty its color. As you know, colorless diamonds are a form of pure carbon; however, when small amounts of nitrogen replace carbon atoms in the crystal structure, the color changes. The trace amounts of nitrogen will cause the crystal to selectively absorb blue light and transmit yellow; hence, the color.

Like other colored diamonds, a yellow diamond is graded as Fancy outside the D to Z range. This means that a yellow diamond might have more colors beyond the Z masterstone. Based on the GIA Colored Diamond Grading System, a yellow diamond can be any of the following—Fancy Light, Fancy, Fancy Dark, Fancy Deep, Fancy Intense, Fancy Vivid.

Knowing the above grading system, you can say that the value of yellow diamonds depends on the intensity of their color and this intensity depends on the amount of nitrogen in the crystal structure. As such, diamond connoisseurs prefer yellow diamonds with pure, rich colors as they’re the most valuable. Take note that a strong yellow-colored diamond becomes a ‘canary diamond’ by name with a higher value.

Brief History

According to the Cape Town Diamond Museum, the first diamond found in South Africa in 1867 was also the first yellow diamond in history. This yellow diamond became known as the Eureka Diamond. It has an oval brilliant shape and a weight of 21.25 carats.

Yellow Diamond, Popularity and Symbolism

Aside from the most obvious—fun, optimism, and cheerfulness, yellow diamonds also represent passion, wisdom, prosperity, and joy. This makes it ideal for couples seeking happiness to enhance their love and commitment.

Yellow is the most famous colored diamonds in history. Below are some of the popular yellow diamonds of our time.

• The Kimberley Octahedral

A 616-carat natural diamond found in Kimberley region in South Africa. DeBeers owns this gem, but it’s currently on display at The Big Hole in Kimberley.

• The Tiffany Yellow Diamond

With an original weight of 287.4ct, The Tiffany is definitely one of the largest yellow diamonds in the world. It’s currently on display at Tiffany & Co’s New York City store.

• The Sun of Africa

The Sun of Africa was originally a 127-ct yellow diamond before it became a 70-carat pear-shaped gem. Compared to the Tiffany, diamond experts believed that it’s not only one of the most unique, the Sun of Africa is also brighter and purer.

• The Red Cross Yellow Diamond

Cut to a 205.07-carat cushion-shaped spectacle from its 375-carat original weight, the Red Cross yellow diamond was distinct because of the Maltese cross shape visible on its upper facet.

Setting Your Buyers’ Expectations

With soaring demands for colored diamonds, you’ll encounter a lot of buyers who are interested in a yellow diamond engagement ring. When this happens, position yourself as a reliable and knowledgeable jeweler. You can do this by educating them and setting their expectations properly when buying.

A few things they need to know include, but are not limited to the following.

1. Explain the diamond color grading system.

This is a critical part of the buyers education process because some buyers might be unaware of the differences between colorless and colored diamonds. For instance, the value of diamonds in the D to Z range decreases as the color becomes more visible. On the other hand, the value of colored diamonds increases as the color becomes more visible and vivid.

2. Shape and cut

Cut impacts the beauty of the diamond. For yellow diamonds, it gets trickier. For instance, a round-brilliant cut may not be ideal for yellow diamonds because they display a more intense color appearance when cut in other shapes but round.

Fancy diamonds are better with fancy shapes. These shapes are oval, square, rectangular, and marquise, among many others.

3. Metals

Help your buyers choose the right metals for their yellow diamond engagement ring. This is because diamonds are highly reflective; thus, the metals can affect the appearance of the yellow diamonds. It’s highly possible for the yellow diamond to reflect the color of the metals including the prongs.

4. Mountings

Inform your buyers ahead of time that the yellow diamond might look darker when mounted in a ring. This way, they won’t feel cheated or disappointed when they see the outcome.

How to Photograph a Yellow Diamond Using the GemLightbox Macro

Let’s now move on to yellow diamond photography. In this section, we’ll demonstrate how to use the GemLightbox Macro for capturing loose stone images and 360 videos.

Macro is the newest addition to the GemLightbox series. It’s a diamond and gemstone video and photography solution that not only works with a smartphone, it also captures images with up to 10x magnification because of its in-built macro lens.

Let’s begin!

Step 1. Power up and remove the Macro front reflector cover.

Step 2. Place the yellow diamond on the platform inside the Macro.

Place the yellow diamond on the platform inside the GemLightbox Macro.

For this one, we captured a radiant cut natural fancy intense yellow diamond VVS 2 in 0.54 carats.

Additionally, we used a black stone holder for this demonstration as we wanted to show you how vibrant a yellow diamond looks on a black background.

Macro comes with 4 stone holders in 3 different colors and sizes.

• Small stone holder to hold stones under 1ct.
• Medium to hold 1-10ct stones.
• Large stone holder for stones that are 10ct and above.

Meanwhile, the colors of the stone holders are white, grey, and black. This means you have more options depending on the message and mood you want to convey in photos and videos.

Step 3. Open the GemLightbox app and position your phone.

Once you’re ready, put back the front cover and position your phone on the smartphone holder.

Click here to watch the complete smartphone holder and Macro set up.

Then, open the GemLightbox app on your phone. The app is available to download on both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store. This will optimize your smartphone camera settings to ensure studio-quality diamond images and 360 videos.

Don’t forget to zoom in, zoom out, or adjust the brightness level if you think it’s necessary.

Step 4. Click to capture!

Lastly, click to capture!

For this demonstration, we captured a yellow diamond photo, a 360, 90, and 45-degree video.

See the results below!

Watch the complete yellow diamond photography demonstration here.

Fancy seeing this yellow diamond on a different background?

Happy photographing and see you on the next Gemstone Photography Series!