learning to photograph very small items

I opened a webshop at the end of august (this year) on etsy.com... ok, since you wondered, the address is http://kerstinhanson.etsy.com thanks for asking, by the way. You're more than welcome to visit me there.

In my shop, I sell earrings designed and handcrafted by... me. The most challenging aspect of getting my shop opened was learning how to take photographs of earrings, which tend to be very, very small. I am getting the hang of taking 'macro' shots, and continue to learn how best to crop, enhance, etc. until the photograph contains primarily the item I wish to show, and not a lot of background, shadows, my reflection(!), and other various unwanted clutter that takes away from the item.

Today I spent a great deal of time revisiting the photos of many of my items that I put in my shop just as I opened it. I worked on the photos with the knowedge I have gained over the past several weeks, and am generally happy with the results. I removed a lot of extra space around the items by cropping them more tightly, and brightened the exposure on a few that were particularly dark.

I'll add some enhanced photos here so you can see my results :)