Creative decisions made along the way while photographing ‘plants in jar’ Starting from early April to mid May.
1. set up just inside my front door that faces N to NW: Backdrop of calico sheet: agee jar upright on stool: agee jar upside down on stool moving agee jar so that seam in the jar created distorted views wine making jar with handle to side on stool 
backdrop and larger base board changes: 
black velvet green towel or lining of a curtain with black curtain behind it or lining of a curtain with cream curtain behind it view from: front or top or an angle 
turn handle of jar to back (& taken in garage) creating more blocks to stop direct sunlight on bottle or plants fully in jar or 
parts of plant sticking out top or side or different levels of water in the bottle 2. Into garage: where light only allowed through high garage door windows (windows face E to NE) using lining with cream curtain behind it slowly blocking this light out using calico sheets 3. Back to front door position: only photographing on cloudy mornings/days using lining with black curtain behind 4. Plant material used: flower heads or leaves with long stems/stalks placing these in agee jars to start 
with, allowing some bending to take place and also for stalk to become softer, more easily bendable fresh or dried leaves/flowers mushrooms - small or puff balls seeds large or on stalks leaves that are partly browned from seasonal changes larger leaves with prominent midribs 5. Reflections: initial reflections on agee jars was minimal - some at top and base of jar wine jar - the reflection were often strips with earlier also the reflection of the world behind me in miniature at the top of the bottle using black velvet on sunny days was a disaster - too much reflection off the jar and shadow patterns showed on the velvet backdrop. Green towel - created again too much reflection (large block of narrow stripes on front plane of bottle) and plant was ‘lost’ in the jar Move into the garage created some very strong curved strips of reflection, but also some hallow reflections at the back of the bottle. Also turning handle to back created much more interesting lines on the neck of the bottle 6. Using plastic bottles: have started to work with these on larger board with black velvet back ground Conclusions that I drew: 
- Handle turned to back removed the distraction of the handle and also created some nice shadow patterns and reflections along the neck of the bottle
- Bottle needed to be full with water to create patterns that were interesting
- Reflection created on dull days of the world behind me (the photographer or actually in front of the bottle) created a world within a world.
- Certain shapes of plants created most interesting results - such as long stalked leaves or long flowers stalks, deeply veined large leaves, long seed pods, skeletonized stalks
- Back drop colour - this did vary, but the lining with black curtain had a little bit of texture that often worked best. Black velvet is creating beautiful colours, am continuing to experiment with this on cloudy days
- Larger base - this removed the distracting draping of the fabric at base of jars.
- Scale - having printed the wine bottle images up to 60cm tall, indicates that these images need to be bigger than real scale, so even bigger than 60cm
- Jar type - both Agee jar and wine bottle create their own context. Am in the early days of playing with plastic bottles, the first experiments have resulted in some encouraging images, so will do more of these with varying sizes and shapes (have cleaned more up now, removing labels and glue has been a challenge)