Shiny inspiration

When my muse decides to take a nap for awhile, I need to find other sources of inspiration and they turn up in strange places. Stores of all kinds inspire me. Especially supermarkets as they have piles of colourful vegetables and fruits and stacks of colourful tins or displays.

Today I was picking up some things at the supermarket and as I came around the corner of an aisle there was a self serve coffee bean display. The colours, shapes and reflections in the chrome made an interesting image, so I took out my cell phone which has a handy little camera in it and took a couple of shots.

People tend to give me odd looks when I take photos of supermarket displays but so far, no one has said anything. I still have niggling worries in the back of my head of being escorted from the supermarket...

What I'd love to know though is when you take images of highly reflective surfaces, how can the photo be taken without the photographer showing up in the reflections? I know it can be done as I've seen professional photos of shiny objects that don't reflect anything but light. But how do they do it???
In my wanderings, I also came across a little pair of rubber ducks with a life ring. Into the cart they went too and I played around with a sketch of one of them in coloured pencil.

Where does your inspiration lie? A store? A cupboard? An activity?