Fishing for TreasureAdventures in Junk

I was wanting to photograph some vintage earrings for sale. Jewelry is a real challenge for the amateur product photographer because it’s small, it’s shiny, and you want the pictures to be very focused and detailed. And beyond that, you want them to be gorgeous, and three-dimensional, and to look so real that the viewer will fall in love with the earrings at once and cash in her kids’ college funds to possess them.

And you don’t want people to see the teeny tiny little images of your elbows and camera reflected in the surface.

So I looked around for a studio. The sewing machine cabinet is covered up right now, so I decided on the old oak wash stand in the living room. I hung a white sheet from the towel rack, carefully smoothing and curving it to give that “endless horizon” invisible look to the background. Then I tossed down some earrings and took a practice shot, with the camera set to the largest image.