Competition entry: Tundra Magnificence
Tundra Magnificence by Brian Narveson
2021 December Competition - A Prints
37 points - Hon. Mention
End of Year: Hon. Mention
Judges' comments:
Lots of detail in the white feathers; no distractions; background lighting is soft, but light on the swan is harsh
Maker's notes:

This image was shot at the nature viewing pull off just south of Brownsville, Minnesota about 11 Am in the morning, using my Canon 7D Mark II and Tamron 150-600 mm zoom lens mounted on a tripod.  Birds were out a ways, so this image was cropped to 1500 x 1000 pixels to fill the frame.  Camera was set to shutter priority to guarantee a fast shutter speed of 1/1000 sec.  ISO set to auto and aperture set to f/9.  Resulting ISO was 200.  Thank goodness for a bright day.  Because the image had so little resolution when cropped to fill the frame, I increased using Topaz Giga-pixel AI 4X to 6000 x 4000 pixels.  It was then sharpened with Topaz Sharpen AI.  Final processing was done in Photoshop CC.