This necklace was shot for the cover of a jewelry trade magazine. It is one of my earliest examples of a fluid item -shot in its entirety- floating in its proper form (i.e. completely visible, and displayed with compound curvature).

This was also the shot that made me realize that all of the "miracle" masking programs and utilities had a long way to go before they could be truly useful. I spent so much time fixing masking errors in this shot that it would have been faster to do it by hand from the start. Once the necklace was removed from the original background, it was combined with the flame background using Live Picture, and retouched in Photoshop.
Gems & Jewelry Magazine