Even though it’s been about 15 years, I still see it as if it were today: For the first time, I’m standing in a South American cloud forest with a camera and a 300mm zoom lens. Suddenly, from a nearby thicket, I hear the familiar chirp of a Masked Flowerpiercer. A handful of blue feathers appear in a tangle of dense branches. I raise the camera to my eye, aim, and press the shutter. I got it! Or did I? Well, the bird is in the frame, but it’s just a small number of blurry, blue pixels. My newfound passion for wildlife photography is quickly replaced by the sobering realization that I have a long and thorny road ahead of me if I want to make my wildlife photos better.