The Cape of Good Hope, South Africa

Thirty miles south of Cape Town in South Africa is the Cape of Good Hope. Standing on cliffs high above ocean waves crashing on rocks, you can see cape cormorants using updrafts to effortlessly glide above the green background. The birds were about 100 feet below my vantage, so if I used a long lens to make the cormorants a significant part of the frame, the beautiful ocean background would be out of focus. In many situations, soft backgrounds behind birds are ideal. Here, though, I thought the wave action was spectacular and I didn't want to lose it. Therefore, I took two shots -- one in which I focused on the bird, and one where I focused on the waves. I then composited the two sharp elements in Photoshop. For the cormorant, I used a 400mm focal length, an f/8 aperture, and a shutter speed of 1/1600th of a second. This is what the scene looked like. I used Photoshop to overcome the limitations of optics.