Black palm cockatoo

One of the bird species that I was excited to photograph in the Bali Bird Park in Indonesia is this black palm cockatoo. It is rare, exotic, and magnificent. As much as I love capturing birds in flight, portraits of amazing birds are nevertheless captivating. The handler held the bird for me, and I asked him to stand in front of a foliage background, far enough away so it would be nicely blurred with my 70-200mm telephoto. Note the diffused light. Direct sunlight at midday is way too harsh for an outdoor portrait -- animal, bird, or human. We brought the cockatoo into the shade, and that enables us to see all that wonderful detail without dealing with harsh shadows or overexposed highlights. In the pet trade, these birds go for a minimum of $15,000! My settings here were 1/250, f/8, and 800 ISO.