High Contrast Flower
There are studio setups you can use to get this effect so I was quite surprised when it happened outside. Basically the flower is in full sunlight but correctly exposed. The background was a bit shady, but the contrast is so high that the background looks black.
Chickadee Looking For Sunflower Seeds
The yellow is the background was actually a large cedar hedge lit by the morning sun. I was really surprised this turned out - 1/40th of a second is usually way too slow to photograph an active bird like a Chickadee.
