The Object; Photo shoot day!

As I was driving in this morning I was thinking to myself, what or how can I use the objects I have to best portray my concept, however I did have a vague idea from looking at Dutch Vanitas paintings such as Harmen Steenwyck's painting below, I wanted to have similar light focused on a certain point style putting the focus and emphasis on the books in my image.
The next thing I knew it I was in uni setting up my equipment, with the help from my assistant Martin Wilby, between us we came up with a few ideas and set about seeing how they would look.

Harman Steenwyck 1640

Martin had the great idea of using books in the hod so to represent "carrying knowledge instead of bricks" as I have changed from one job to another. 

after we arranged the objects how I thought they best suited each other and where fairly balanced we, tried various lighting ideas.

One of the final negatives from my final image, as you can see i have changed the way that the objects are laid out from that in the first image above, when composing it originally, I thought it was almost right but with a little guidance from Jonathan who said that it was too bright thus portraying to much positivity so i obtained some mud/dirt and smeared it all over to take some of the shine away and give it a real dirty, filthy look and thus making it a little less positive maybe even a little negative.