Yesterday in my garden, this Iris bud was spotlit by the sun. I purposely underexposed (at ISO 100, 1/6 of a second and f/36) to make the brown fence behind the flower go towards a dark black and to bring out the vibrancy of the colors of the bud.
In this day and age of digital captures, with the vast exposure range inherent in a RAW exposure, it’s important to remember that the most dramatic images start by using silver-halide era exposure techniques, where the photographer controls over and under exposure to facilitate a specific vision of a photograph.