"This photo of the Arctic tern was taken during the month of July near Arnarstapi in western Iceland. During that time, it is relatively easy to have them close by as it is the breeding season, and they fly over you to protect their nests and prevent you from getting too close to their chicks.
They are quite aggressive birds at that moment, and after observing them on many occasions, I realized that before attacking me, they would pause in the air with their wings open to initiate a dive. I saw that there I could have some opportunities to capture portraits in almost "celestial" poses, so I focused on capturing that photo I had in mind.
It is a full-format photo, taken with focus tracking and without cropping. I highly value composing in-camera and not relying on post-cropping, as well as "finishing" the photo in-camera and using minimal post-processing. In this specific case, it was very easy because I overexposed by one and two-thirds stops to make the background white and the bird's lines resemble a drawing. The black and white conversion gave it the final touch to make it look like a charcoal pencil drawing.
The camera used was a full-frame with a 100-400mm zoom lens, ISO 400, F5.6, and a sky overexposure of +1.66 stops."
