Portrait of a crowned pigeon

This is a western crowned pigeon in Papua New Guinea. It looks like I used flash, but I didn’t. The early morning sun made it through to the forest floor and illuminated the bird; the dark background was perfect. The only thing that made sense to me in photographing the pigeon was to wait until the head was turned such that the crown was parallel with the back of the camera – i.e. the plane of the digital sensor. Given the low light and the fact I couldn’t use a small lens aperture for depth of field, when the crown became parallel, it would photograph with complete depth of field at any aperture. I felt that was essential to show all of the amazing detail. My settings were 1/60, f/5.0, and 3200 ISO. I used a 100-400mm telephoto for the shot. In post-processing, I applied the dodge tool to bring out the color in the mauve feathers on the body.