Golden Exposure

I had a little play with the camera today after reading on how to get weird lighting effects from adjusting various settings. This was the end result.

It was spot metered and the Goldfinch was very brightly lit in the mid afternoon sun, this had the effect of blowing out the background to black. I have not photoshopped anything here, other than added a little vibrancy and contrast to bring the yellow back up. I just changed the exposure compensation until I got the background uniformly black. I couldn't really decide on the crop either (I didn't get a shot of the bird in a more helpful pose alas), and alternative crop looked like this.

As is always the case with experimentation I am not 100% happy with this first attempt, but it was great fun having a play around with the camera for a change, and not just pointing and shooting using the tried and trusted!