This is a resplendent quetzal I captured in Costa Rica. In the original image, the background tree was completely defined -- and therefore very busy and visually distracting -- because the bird was flying very close to the branches. It came out of the tree so fast I was surprised I captured it at all. I shot this with an f/8 lens aperture, but even had I been using a larger opening, given the camera-to-subject distance the tree still would have been too sharp. So, I took the time to make a precise selection around the periphery of the quetzal with Photoshop’s pen tool. Using the pulldown menu command, Select > inverse, I selected everything except the bird (i.e. the background) and then applied a realistic blur with Filter > blur gallery > field blur. This creates a much more natural blur effect compared to Filter > blur > Gaussian blur which I rarely use now. I captured this flight shot with a 100-400mm Canon zoom, and the shutter was 1/2500. In retrospect, it should have been faster because the wing feathers aren’t tack sharp. The ISO was 2000. This image has been cropped to give me a frame-filling composition.
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