First of all I tried matt white marbles on a reflective surface, the images produced were good, but, the image seemed to lack soul, I think this was down to a lack of context. I continued, and I specifically wanted a small subject, so, I decided upon jacks and ball, mainly because these have context to each other. Also, a benefit of the jacks was the silver reflective jacks and the gold matt jacks, these differences were used within the image for artistic effect, focussing on the reflective silver jack and placing the gold jacks out of focus.
I wanted subtle reflection on the subjects from the light source, as a strong or directional light would have been too intense on the highly reflective silver jack. So to create a softer, more subtle lighting I darkened the room and loaded a fully white image on my laptop screen and used this as a softer source, and side lit the subjects. The image was captured with a 10 second exposure and depth of field was dictated by the f/7.1 aperture giving focus through to out-of-focus towards the back of the image.