Polar glass

Having failed to take any photos today before I got home from work, I decided to do something different to my usual response to the situation (flowers or clouds, or just falling asleep!). So rather than leave it till later and then rush, I decided to play around with this rather lovely glass (crystal? - how do you tell?) polar bear I inherited from my aunt (she was a great traveller and for many years Norway was a regular destination - I have no idea where this bear came from, though).

Oddly (well, to me), flash messed things up, so it's lucky I decided to experiment while there was still some daylight.

This has been cropped, obviously, and I've taken the exposure down a bit, which darkened the background while bringing out the reflections etc in the glass nicely. In fact I'm beginning to wonder if the iPhone's camera (on the 4) tends to over expose. Either that or I just like dark pictures! I did try this in negative, but it just looked like too much messing, whereas the straight picture is good enough to not need that.