On my last photo tour to Costa Rica, my goal was to capture a resplendent quetzal in flight. This is not easy to do, so when I captured this shot I was (to be honest) very surprised because I thought I'd missed it. They fly very fast and it's tough just to keep them in the frame. However, the quetzal was small in the composition and it was right up against the tree from which it had flown. Therefore, I had to crop it significantly -- down to 11 megabytes. In addition, the background very busy and distracting because there wasn't enough separation between the bird and the tree. Using the pen tool, I carefully made a precise selection around the bird and then replaced the background with out of focus foliage. Then, using Topaz Gigapixel AI, Topaz DeNoise AI, and Topaz Sharpen AI, I increased the resolution, removed the noise, and sharpened the image. Thanks to current technology, I was able to save this shot. My settings were 1/2500, f/8, and 2000 ISO. In retrospect, I should have used a faster shutter speed because there is a little bit of blur in the far wing. I assumed the large wings moved relatively slowly, but that was not the case.
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