I always thought still-life pictures were rather boring, until I was introduced to Edward Weston's Pepper pictures. The perverse looking pepper is the star, but only because how the light is handled.

For my apple picture, I shot in total darkness for 30 seconds, and then used this flashlight to paint the apple with the laser pointer, with a quick flash of light at the end to give it some depth.

If you've never done light painting, it's fun and pretty easy to do (but you need to experiment to get it right). Now I just need to let the apple rot, and re-take the picture when it gets more interesting.