Here's a question, inspired by someone else's post elsewhere in the forum.
For me, the focus of my photography is light and shadow. No matter what I'm doing, the light and shadow in a shot is most often the main thing I'm concentrating on. I have an entire set on my Flickr photostream devoted to 'Light and Shadow,' even. So, obviously, this is where I put a lot of my experimental energy!
I've find that sometimes a very high contrast in a shot can add a phenomenal amount of character to a shot... especially in black-and-white. This doesn't just mean whacking the 'contrast' slider to one end in photoshop, of course; it needs to be done thoughtfully, and in a way that actually matters to the shot.
Two of my favorite shots that I took right after getting the XTi are (deliberately) very high contrast, and I think they only have the impact they do because of it. I'll toss them in below (in small form), but my query is whether others have tried going for deliberately high-contrast (even 'overexposed') shots, and if not, talking about what they might try... and if so, I'd be curious to see the best results!
