Change up the mood with lighting
Lighting is one of the best ways you can adjust the mood or inject an interesting element to your visuals. With natural lighting, simply place your subject by the window and angle it in different ways to test out how the light hits your object. Furthermore, being patient and snapping shots at different hours of the day — morning, afternoon, golden hour, blue hour — could yield vastly different effects that might surprise you!
As for artificial lighting, light reflectors can allow you to manipulate natural light in your scene. Other equipment can also be used to soften shadows, illuminate the subject and highlight different textures. The trick to making your picture seem like it has been taken in a professional studio is to set your camera to a very fast shutter speed, low ISO setting and a narrow aperture. Doing so will keep ambient light out of the image and give you more control over the light from your flash.
No matter what kind of lighting you decide to use, the fool proof way to master still life photography is through trial and error. Take your time with it — after all, your subject isn’t going anywhere!