I noticed these little glass vases in our china cabinet the other day and thought they might work well with this series of glassware shots I seem to be doing. Juliette used to keep these on her windowsill when she was in college, but I haven't seen them in what seems like a long time.

In thinking about what I wanted to do with this shot, I knew I wanted to do something with reflections. A lot of the close-up stuff I've been liking on Flickr and from various stock agencies seems to be shot using a glass or plexi table surface, which makes for great reflections. I, unfortunately, don't have anything like that around the house, so I improvised a little by putting the candles and vases into a cookie sheet that was filled to about a quarter inch with water. In order not to have the pan show up too noticeably in the shot, I had to go with more low-key lighting, but I think it worked out pretty well.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/50 sec, ISO 200. Background is lit with a flashlight through an inverted pilsner glass and the bottom of a brandy snifter. Slight vibrancy tweak, sharpening, and vignetting added in Aperture 3.

Thoughts for improvement: I'm not really thrilled with how the background is lit. I think it would probably be better if I could either have more glow on the wall or just leave it completely dark. There are also a few streaks on the glass that I couldn't quite get rid of since we were out of Windex. Finally, since the cookie sheet I used is one that has been in and out of the oven a lot, the bottom has gotten a little warped from the heat. That's why the right-hand vase is a little tilted. Ideally, I'd like to use something to contain the water that was both completely flat and also much wider and longer so that it didn't appear in the frame at all.