Brahminy kite swooping on food

Brahminy Kite swooping on prey. Taken originally as a video sequence using a GoPro Hero3 camera at 1080p/50fps the kite swooped and took the prey item (a small washed up fish) in the blink of an eye. The camera was set at ultra wide angle and was close to the prey. The bird was used to fishermen on the beach at Brooms Head NSW Australia and was not afraid of the camera 1 meter away. I triggered the sequence from my iPad using the new WiFi facility of the Hero3. Surprisingly each frame was reasonably sharp with no motion blur so I screen-grabbed the frames displayed using Adobe Premier Pro CS6. Using Adobe Photoshop CS6 the jpg screen shots were sharpened slightly and made 300 dpi. The central image, with the kite making first contact with the prey, was used as the background. From the remaining images the bird was selected using the quick selection tool with the edges refined using the refine edge tool. The layers of the bird in flight were named in the sequence as they appeared in the video and placed on the background accordingly. By using the arrange layer button each layer was placed behind the one preceding it; this worked fine except for the central image where I had to erase the parts of the layer that were in front and should have been behind. This was facilitated by making the offending layer transparent so I could erase accurately. In the finished image the bird is not enlarged but the flight sequence is arranged to avoid super-impositions. I though the shadows were dramatic and connected them to the bird selection and erased the connecting pixels. I've done this sort of thing before with motor drive images taken with my Nikon D200 but this is the first time from video frame grabs. It's is a testament to the remarkable qualities of the new GoPro Hero3 camera and was fun to do. It made up for not catching any fish on the beach.