Blowing out highlights

Nothing new or fantastically original here. I thought that the shape of lamp cover made an interesting cut out in the clock so I just took the picture and blew out the highlights to get everything below a certain tone value to show no information (white).

The clock background is metal and to all intents and purposes gray, just about dark enough to keep some information in even with ramping up the exposure level in Lightroom. This was important for the stencil effect to work.

I also cropped out half of the clock, think it makes for a more balanced composition.