Another Trick from the Bag

It was broad daylight. So how did I get this photo with the subject lit while everything else is dark? For this to work, there has to be a wide range of light (high amount of contrast) between the shadows and the highlights. The trick is to meter the brightest spot, which in this case was the seagulls neck, and then use a very fast shutter speed. This causes only the brightest areas to be recorded and the rest to fall into shadows, in this case not much more than the bird and the water ripples. The shutter speed for this photo was 1/6000 sec. which is very fast. Now, if I could just remember to use this technique more often...