Today, I ventured around Capitol Hill with the same 55mm F/2 lens as last time, extended even further to around 4.5cm to get more magnification. This time, however, I used a flash and diffuser, which had a big effect!
By using a fast shutter speed (1/250s in these examples) and bright flash, exposure from from sun was minimized, leading to better separation of the subject from the background: because the background is illuminated only by the sun, it is much darker.
This setup also allows for photos to be taken in the shade at reasonable ISOs. The lack of direct sunlight minimizes glare and reflections, and resulted in softer lighting over all.
Alex Weeks 