This is a chimango caracara we passed on the highway here in Patagonia. It was perched on a fence waiting its turn to feed on a small road kill. When it flew, it skillfully used the wind to hover over the dead animal and that's when I took this shot. From the angle I was shooting, the background was less than ideal. It was out of focus, which worked, but you could make out the light fence posts and that really detracted from the image of the bird. So, I switched my 100-500mm Canon zoom from autofocus to MF, and then I took several out of focus potential background pictures. I wanted to maintain the same lighting condition and the correct colors indicative of the original environment. Next, I carefully selected the caracara using a combination of the quick selection tool and the lasso tool in Photoshop. When I then chose Select > inverse, everything except the bird was selected, meaning the background. I pasted into this selected background the new and natural looking blurred background to complete the composite. The settings for the image of the raptor were 1/3200, f/9, and 2000 ISO.
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