I think of photography like building a puzzle. I start with the first corner piece (the product or the room) and then I add other pieces one at a time (Lights, the background elements, etc.) After I get the sides done I start on the center. In my case this involves me fussing over the small stuff. I move a light an inch here. I move a prop a foot further back. Slowly but surly I'll put together what I think is a pretty good/well composed image.
The puzzle takes shape but I've got a lot of pieces that look alike.
I start thinking about what I will need in Photoshop. I may need a bottle and a glass in focus or I need to light a specific area of the frame and nothing else. Whether I need one, two or twenty images I capture all I need so that when I'm in Photoshop I can continue putting the puzzle together.
This setup required 16 separate images to have the complete image in focus.
The last pieces are the cleaning, color correction and overall toning of the image. Like most puzzles if I've done everything right the last few pieces slide right into place.
To me the hardest part is the beginning when I don't really know what the puzzle is supposed to look like. If I'm lucky I've got the box photo to refer to (In this analogy that is a really good brief!) but more often my puzzles show up in a zip lock bag with a few pieces missing and extra pieces from some other puzzle.
This is way having good communication with a client is so important. I need to know what the puzzle looks like. Which ones are the corner pieces? Are we doing a 1000 piece puzzle or a 100 piece puzzle?