Home Depot has flexible, 1/8"–thick white plastic 4x8’ sheets that are just about perfect for making smoothly curved backgrounds. I had meaning to put up drywall, curving from the wall to ceiling, for years, but the project, which would involve making multiple cuts at 1" intervals on the back of 1/4" drywall, daunted me. But then we found this stuff. It's made my life a lot easier.
First, I tried shooting on white:

36" light tent, zipper on ‘floor’, top panel completely removed/open to new ‘ceiling’. Customer didn't like it, felt the colors were too washed out. This was shot with the lumix, as was the thumbnail link (not shown—sorry, I have no idea how I accomplished that...) Directory: 20170321KP

Note that studio props (boxes, styrofoam) are flat, and black plastic is tilted behind them. Foam blocks to give add'l height; also plastic is resting on 1qt yogurt container (filled with clay) for height. This sharp angle not only gives more ‘background real estate’ it looks better too.
- hero (i.e. pendant) 3" from front edge of table
- camera up to 15" from front edge of table (i.e. 18" from hero)
- flash 18" from front edge & (left) side edge of table (i.e. 45deg <)
- flash angled up at 30 degrees; half power; used f5.6–f8
- black plastic propped with 1 qt yogurt container (roughly 40? deg) immediately behind props;
- NOT SHOWN: 9x24 (approx) white diffusing panel to block specular highlights from halogen light, stray light from leading edge of flash
- ALSO, nota bene: white styrofoam or ‘foam fabric’[1] positioned from front edge of display to just under lens to bounce light onto front metal edges of pendants. White foamcore to the right side is also to help balance light.

a bit of image editing rescuses this garden/bouquet style silk flower gift wrap, made in Jul2014 13dec2018

Ever so slowly I am becoming more comfortable shooting with flash. Oh, and Cindi B's beads feature some very nice scrolling. 11mar2016

links to documentaries—2nd wave feminism, Mona Lisa recreated photographically, fabulous mushroom photos 28nov2014

These heart shaped leaves encompass the two opposing facets of the season for me: glorious golden light—symbolic of life; yet they also presage the death—or dormancy, at least—of winter. 19oct2010

a piece of black and white bead embroidery photographed over several years with 4 different cameras... 27aug2015

comparison of two yellow abstracts made with Creation is Messy Hades black and Effetre Dense 066 black. Originally posted 20oct07 20oct2007

Granted, this picture is for a single bead, but it shows the camera mounted on the tripod, with the black plexi, the light (make certain the base is ceramic). Use tungsten fujichrome type II 64T film, and matching 500w photofloods (I can never remember whether that's 3200 or 3400 kelvins, but the ...

Just the one bead , but includes a shot of the setup used to photograph it, too. (posted 17dec03) 22may2004

I shoot two artist's work regularly: my own, and Kristin Perkins'. While both of us use opaque accents in our beads, we tend to emphasize transparency. Kristin adds another layer of complication (from the photographer's point of view) with the highly polished silver in which she sets her beads: ...

Very cool hair adornments ; file created 16jun06; spelling error in artist's name corrected 25jun06 17jun2006

Ice blue theme resurrected ; file originally created 29aug05; reworked and renamed 25jun06 25jun2006
[1]the latter shown
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Sylvus Tarn