Thanks everyone for all the compliments! Sometimes I might get busy and forget to reply, but I never forget the compliments, and I appreciate everyone taking the time to check out my photos!
What these two photos are, is an example for Aaron on a neat technique that I use on mostly floral subjects. Playing with light and shadows can transform a regular flower into something really cool. I posted a Poinsettia leaf a while back doing this. You could even try this with something the grill radiator ornament of a '34 Duesenberg for example, or anything for that matter. The larger the subject, and the further away the subject, the more difficult this technique is.
I went out and took two quick shots of a Spider plant bloom. While it's not a real exciting flower as far as flowers go, it becomes an unusual subject when I adjust the shutter speed and darken the surroundings.
The first photo shows the image taken at 1/4000, aperature automatically adjusted to 5.6 in the bright sunlight (slightly overhead, time taken was about 2:00 p.m.) and the lense I used was my Sigma 70-300 in Macro mode and the distance was about 3 feet. Any lense should work, but it seems that Macro lenses give a much better lighting effect.
The second photo was taken moments later, when I adjusted the shutter to 1/350, aperature coming up to 6.5 and shows that the background really wasn't dark at all, but was leaves of trees across the way. I know this second photo washed out, but I wanted to show the true background while it shows how shutter speed can really change a subject.
The shutter speed can be slowed down a little to increase the light (3000, 2000, etc). Play with the settings a little and see how that works out!