Reflections in wood

Today I've been experimenting with taking with texture. I took about 50 shots of this table from across the room using the zoom. The table is made from a single cross-section piece of a tree that was cut down in Tanzania when Mark was a boy. (poor tree!)

I was trying to capture the texture on the side compared to the gloss on the table top with the reflections from the collage photo of our ThinkQuest trip to San Francisco. It's no brain work from me - after numerous tries on varied settings I eventually set the camera on Auto.  The camera told me to raise the flash and bingo. So simple. Clever camera. I happily deleted all my other attempts. Hmmm the copper jug could have been better placed - or left out. What do you think, Maggie?