Thanks for the kind words! I included a bit of lighting info on flickr, I'll repeat it here with a few more details and I'd be happy to elaborate on anything you like:
Lighting info:
-Sunpak 433d camera right and in front in small homemade softbox (~8"x9") for key light (this is a very large light source up close).
-Sunpak 433d camera right and behind in snoot for a rim light (this is backlighting the dried up pod).
-Triggered with rf602's (wireless radio triggers).
-Background lit by key, but the background was curved to get the gradient on it- the middle part of the background is closer to the key and perpendicular to it so it ends up brightest. A small amount of dodging was also used to darken the bottom right corner a smidgen.
I 'cheated' for the levitation, it was hung with fishing line then cloned in post. In this case I tied a loop around the stem of the pod as it was the simplest approach and I wanted to minimize handling the pod (the seeds really wanted to float away
). If it was more durable I would have superglued the line somewhere on the back. The main goal is to minimize the amount of detailed visible parts in the picture that the line runs in front of to make the cloning easier.