I picked this weeks subject because I wanted to try the paint cloud photograph I had tried a week ago. I purchased a much smaller plastic fish tank for this, but I ran into two problems. The tank was somewhat triangular in shape which had terrible reflections and if that wasn't enough the plastic refracted the light into a rainbow of colors. Either one of these problems made the tank unusable for my purposes so I decide I would need to get a third smaller glass tank for the cloud project.
By the time I had figured out these limitations I had already spent two hours minutely adjusting the light on the bottle. I really liked the way it looked and because of this felt I could make a great tabletop photograph. The only problem was the bottle was suspended upside down ready to be submerged in water.
Fortunately the lighting was very symmetrical so I was able to flip the nail polish right side up and place it on a Plexiglas surface with only a minimal amount of readjustment to the lights. I added the background light and thought I had a really nice simple image, but as with most things I wanted to make it more interesting.
I thought about adding drops of paint, which I had available for the cloud effect I was originally trying to create. Since I had a nice image already, if I managed to ruin everything with paint it didn't matter.
I've had a few moments in this photo project where I had a nicely lit image but I wanted to add something to make it more visually appealing. The whisky splash photo from a few weeks ago is one example. I already had a solid image I just tried to add something dynamic. I believe starting with great lighting was key in both instances.