At work one day the "theme of the day" was "tea". I'm not much of a tea drinker, but thinking about tea made me think about a teapot, which is a standard reference model in the 3D graphics world. Another reference model used in the 3D raytracing world is the Cornell box. The Cornell box is actually a real box that they take photographs of to compare to 3D renderings of the exact same scene and tweak lighting algorithms.

So, for my contribution to the photo of the day, I decided to quickly throw together my own version of the Cornell box using bits and pieces I had lying around the house, with a teapot inside. This was constructed using a banker's box with a hole cut in the side, some construction paper taped to the inside ends of the box, some Rubik's cube puzzles, and our teapot that was part of our wedding dinnerware set. I put a tissue over the hole in the top, and manually triggered my flash while I was exposing the photo.

Technical Details: This picture was taken with my 5D Mark II + EF 17-40L at 40mm, ISO 100, f/4 for 1 second.