Wild macaws

This is a giant sinkhole near Campo Grande, Brazil. There are about 50 pairs of mating red and green macaws that nest there, and they are constantly flying to find nesting material and then food for the chicks. Most of the time, their flight paths are far enough away to require a long lens. That makes the background out of focus. The only way to show the context of the environment that includes the birds is to photograph the background with a wide angle lens (16-35mm) and the macaws with a telephoto. I used a 500mm Canon telephoto plus a 1.4x teleconverter, giving me 700mm of focal length. Then, in Photoshop, I meticulously selected the birds with the pen tool and pasted them into the background. It's interesting that this composite image looks more realistic than the telephoto shots alone because we always see context with our eyes and never see out of focus backgrounds.