Studio Folio - Thunder eggs

For the shot of my choice I decided to do another macro shoot. I decided to capture the detail of thunder eggs, as they have some really interesting patterns and textures. I used my 100mm macro lens on my SLR. They were fairly hard to light as the surfaces are glazed and are reflective, so it was almost like shooting another glass object.
If it is suitable to submit, I want to crop sections of 4 or 5 shots and present them together, like the photo below, as I think it is more interesting than just submitting one.

I would really appreciate any comments or suggestions! Thankyou!

I have a fair few cross sections to choose from, so if you could let me know which ones are your favorites that would be great! If you specifically like one and think I should just choose that, let me know, as all of the crops obviously have more of the rock in them. Here is a bunch of my favorite cross sections.

Studio Folio - Galileo's Thermometer

This is another glass shoot for my studio folio. I like it better than the decanter.

This is a Galileo's Thermometer; the glass balls move up and down depending on the temperature. For the background I used red and blue colours to represent 'hot and cold', to emphasize that it is a thermometer.

Studio Folio - Red Wine

My second shoot for studio folio, just a bottle of red wine. I am quite happy with this and I think the colours worked out well.

Studio Folio - Glass Decanter

Here is my first shoot for studio. It is a wine decanter, but I am not happy with it. The wine was too dark, and just came out black even though it was back lit. The actual glass itself is also poorly crafted and has dents and other problems with it. So I will probably end up shooting something else.

Workshop #3 - Hasselblads

Yay we got to work with the hasselblads finally! And they were SO incredibly slow. I am considering downloading the software so I can use it on my laptop rather than those ancient apple computers because it took almost 5 minutes to take each shot!
We also had a fair bit of trouble getting the camera to work, so I can't say it was a terribly 'good' first impression. But after the half an hour it took to finally take a picture, it looked great! The quality is just lovely and there is just so much you can do with such a large file.

For the exercise we decided to go with a sort of 'Bunnings Warehouse' kinda company. So we used the ladder as our prop. The cover page shop is supposed to put a 'friendly face' on the brand, while still being casual and accessible. Our landscape spread page shows off the artistic and 'new age' side of the company. Overall I think the shots work well and it was an interesting experience with these wonderful devices.

Workshop #2 - Product Revision

We were working tethered for this shoot, which was a great new experience which I am sure to use in the future. It was great being able to see the image on a large screen and made it much easier to notice flaws in the focus and composition etc. Therefore I think a greatly overall quality can be expected from photos when shooting tethered to a computer. I still like taking the shot through the camera however, because it just seems weird to actually take it from the computer without even touching the camera!
For my packaged product I chose to do fortune cookies. I had an asian style material and a candle temple thing as my props. Originally I had the material as the background (the first shot), but it was wrinkly and it just looked really tacky, so I tried having it on the ground (the second shot) but in the second one the product gets lost in the background so I think it works better having it behind the product just to add some separation, but next time I'll iron it first!
Overall I think the revision was ok, but I really want to get into some new stuff.

Workshop #1 - Portrait Revision

For this image, I was just experimenting with different colours of cellophane in front of the lights. I had a blue backlight, shining through a piece of wood with lots of holes in it, and a green snoot light on the subject.
I wanted to use a rembrandt lighting style for this portrait to make it look more edgy. I don't know what you would use this portrait for, maybe advertising a club or something?

Main light: f8
Fill Light: f4
Ratio: 4:1
Background: f22 (due to backlight)

As this was mainly an experiment I am not going to be too hard on myself about the style, but I under exposed the image a fair bit, so I had to lighten it a little in photoshop to bring out the shadows a bit. The backlight effect didn't work as well as I had hoped, as you can see the outline of the light through the holes. I am surprised at how vibrant the green and blue came out though, I didn't expect it to make such a difference.