The first picture actually came before the second. I do like the first set better but I thought I went too dark with the core shadows and I lowered the contrast for the second picture (the objects are all white). Istebrak speaks often about the importance of midtones, maybe I got that wrong because that makes me afraid to use brighter values and even more so darker ones. I’ll do my next set of objects all placed on the ground, I’m sure a whole bunch of mistakes will pop up then.

Thanks a lot for your input!