I gathered six colored pencils: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I wanted them to be in a row, so I used packaging tape to hold them in place.

I prepared the set-up on my bed. It required a shiny gold reflecting paper on for the base, and a simple white sheet of poster board for the backdrop. I put my camera on a tripod about 1 foot from where the pencils will be located.

Equipment: Canon EOS 5D,  Canon 100mm macro lens, 580ex II flash, tripod, and remote switch.

I held the row of pencils out in front of the camera and took the shot using the remote switch. The flash is pointing up towards the ceiling, so the light source will bounce off the ceiling hitting the top of the pencils. The light will also reflect off the gold paper and lighten the bottom of the pencils. I took several shots to make sure the subject was in focus, and tried several flash angles.
 

This was the best shot out of the batch straight from the camera.

I changed the background to a true white using PhotoImpact software. I just used the fill tool, which paints all the gray into white.

Next I rotated the pencils to that they are vertical. I also cropped out the piece of tape at the bottom of the pencils.

Then I added a flood filter to create the appearance of water below the pencils. Done!