Photographing Jewelry (or how to drive yourself insane)

I just launched two more items on Etsy, which necessitated my photographing them first.  I set up my tiny little studio, mounted my camera on its tripod, hooked up the shutter release, positioned the studio lights and hoped for the best.  I was doing okay until I had to shoot the earrings, which is always a chore.  I tried shooting them by laying them flat on a slight incline, with my camera pointing down, almost directly over them.  This was trying, as the earrings would often slide down the incline.  (Again and again.)

I recently checked out an article on how to shoot jewelry, which suggested hanging the earrings from a thread.  I thought this would be great for my skull earrings, which are suited to bizarre display.  This is what I ended up with:

You can see the thread, which is not great, but this is my first attempt and I decided to go with it.  This is a useful technique because it eliminates distracting detail in the background.

Another technique I read about, and would love to try, is to position jewelry on highly-reflective sheets of black lucite.  It creates a sumptuous shadow that emphasizes the lines of the piece.  This is next on my list!

Here is the matching necklace for the earrings, my latest piece of skull jewelry:

I like to be as original as possible when shooting my jewelry, but the reason everyone uses these techniques is because they're ridiculously effective.  So at least for now, I'm following suit.

Have a great week!