Photographing your Jewelry or other items for the Web

I have always been an amateur photographer. Buying new equipment hoping it would help. Only to discover once again....IT IS NOT the equipment...but sadly the photographer. But I think I finally got the set-up correct. Here are some of my first test shots to show you how lighting can affect your digital pictures. This is the same pair of earrings on the same background. All I did was change the lighting. I did not change the settings on my camera. One may have been a flash, one fluorescent lights, one I may have added an Ott light.

At that time I must use my new favorite word: Annoying!!
You see having 3 children and another website that keeps my busy I have spare minutes to work on my love, the Jewelry. So it is a time thing. I just don't have time to figure all this out. But instead of making another pair of earring that I am DIEING to do I have to read about photography. I guess it is all a matter of white balance on your camera and good lighting but not to harsh. I finally after many years of waiting bought a new digital camera, a Canon Rebel XT. I love it by the way. I have messed around a bit with the settings. More of that in another post.
Back to lighting....Connie Fox has some very good tips on a set up to help get good lighting without glare:
http://www.jatayu.com/Education/StudioTour/ST-DigitalPhoto.htm
In a coming post I will take a picture of my set up. It is very similar to Connie's idea but I do not use a bucket. She also has some VERY good insight in to photographing your Jewelry. I do have some professional photo lights from past foray's in to photography and they have plastic shields on them that are suppose to diffuse the light. But it was not enough with all that bling I am shooting. So I got a kind of photo box/tent kind of thing. In fact I borrowed one from a friend to make sure it would work before I once again purchased more photo equipment. I did vow to STOP buying equipment! The box/tent thing seems to work so I am investing in my own. I am getting reasonable good pictures now. Here is a better picture of the earrings above:

I am now going to try to take picture of my Jewelry on a white background. I am not to sure that the backgrounds I am using are distracting. My setup currently uses granite and other rocks as the backdrop.