Marty’s photo of the day #5013: If you are viewing this photo on a smartphone, it probably won’t look like much. But if you are viewing it on a big screen, it’s really, really cool! In 2014, Deb and I were in a boat along the coast of Costa Rica, watching bottlenose dolphins hunting, when their prey, ballyhoo, took to the air. Since the ballyhoo were far away, this image required cropping that degraded it significantly—until now.

This shot is part of my photo revival project as explained below:

Although my current books are fiction, my first two books, “Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents” and “Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico,” were nonfiction, featuring photos and stories of Deb’s and my adventures as we traveled the world looking for rare and interesting wildlife.

Those travels took place between 2001 and 2014, and in the years following, digital cameras, photo editing programs, and my own photo editing skills have come a long way. My current project is to revisit photos I rejected for my books but might have included had I been able to overcome their quality issues.

Now, with better editing skills and programs, I can save many photos I couldn’t have saved before. While not all blurry, soft, or noisy photos are repairable, it’s tremendously satisfying to revive photos where the animals did their job, but either I or my equipment failed.