This is a great photograph. This is precisely what this assignment called for. What’s interesting about your assignment is you’ve compared two relatively similar photographs. Many people choose to compose a cluttered picture for their “beast” and a simplified macro photograph for their “beauty”. However both of your photographs are simplified and without clutter using the negative space to create a sense of simplicity.
Therefore you’ve used abstraction, depth and dark undertones to create a more visually pleasing photograph. This is great because it shows that more than just proximity to your object and composition go towards creating interesting photographs.
You’ve captured the essence of what this assignment asked for. The only technical issue I want to draw your attention to is the glare at the end of one of the spoons. It’s not noticeable when the image is smaller but if you look at your second image in larger format you’ll notice a “blown out” area. This area is white an overexposed at the end of your spoon. Being “blown out” means the object has lost all definition and your camera had a hard time handling the wide contrast in the shot so it made the compromise of overexposing the whites in that glare.
You can often fix these issues by lowering your exposure, changing the lighting or changing your position. It’s not terrible, and almost all digital cameras suffer from this problem, but it’s something you need to be aware of, especially when you’re dealing with images that have such bright whites or great variances in contrast (skies are often blown out in digital photographs. They appear white with no definition or texture).
Other than that… great work!