Hi susie... looks like you've picked up this year where you finished last year.
love your oil and water shots, as well as your ice cubes for watery.. reminding me of your crystals from last year.
Was your spices shot that brought me in here..... I think the "halo" and the colour cast of the BG are two separate issues, correcting the WB reduces this impact of the halo, as it doesnt stand out so much once the pinkyness has been removed from the BG.
Did you use a raynox or something to get closer here, sometimes filters can give colour casts, and I'm not sure if the halo is lighting generated, or processing? Sometimes upping contrast and / or pulling back highlights (too much) can give rise to this.
Not sure what lighting conditions might give rise to that effect (an object lit from behind will have a "rim light" slight halo effect.... but not to a large degree as here (I wouldn;t have thought??)
I've had a bit of a play, sure you won;t mind.
Geek warning btw!
Original image opened in LR for comparisons. (Any red areas are the highlight warning (blown areas), similarly blue is shadow warning (pure black)
WB corrected by sampling from BG (an area that should be white) This needed a large shift to green (to reduce the magenta).
Next, I brightened the highlights to brighten the BG a bit..........
same image but with highlight / shadow warnings now turned on (area of halo now blown white)
reducing whites halo is now not blown white. Still have shadow warnings (don't mind a few of them
)
Messing with the highlights and whites has affected the spices a bit, so
I layered the WB corrected original and painted them back through
Any way up, I really like it, the threes and the varying sizes have already been mentioned as being very appealing, and the colour is certainly bold.