The setup was really simple too:-) The paperclip is actually about 3 inches long. It was hung by a white thread about 2 inches in front of a piece of white printer paper. I used a bare bulb strobe at roughly 45 degrees up and 45 degrees to the side to get the shadow. By moving the background closer/farther from the paperclip, I was able to "focus" the shadow. Then I just did some very minor touch up in PS to remove the thread and thread shadow, which were very small anyway due to the paperclip size, no cropping or rotating, the angle and scale are the way it was shot.
