I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Ife Orekoya and his beautiful family for many years. One of the reasons I donate all money from my photograph sales to local youth track programs is because of the relationships that have come from programs like the Santa Clarita Storm Track Club our family participated in. The chance to meet talented athletes like Ife and to get to know their families is a true joy.

I was happy to see Ife and Saturday’s Simi Valley Winter Championships Qualifier. After hugging him following his qualifying 60M race (7.26), I teased him about the face he always makes at the finish. It made me wish I had a longer lens to focus on an action portrait. But when I got home and began editing, I realized I had artificial intelligence software that could help with that. 🙂

So, I fired up Topaz Gigapixel AI and used one of its latest features, Face Recovery, to increase the final cropped size of this image by 400% to over 22,000 pixels wide. This uses artificial intelligence to “rebuild” the face at a higher resolution. It’s incredibly effective. Topaz Gigapixel AI also uses sophisticated algorithms to reduce noise, fix blur and remove compression artifacts in the upscaling process. As I hope you can see, the result is the ability to go deeper into a photo without sacrificing image quality. It’s quite something.

If I’m being transparent, I still want a longer lens. I’ve been eyeing the new Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 Sports Lens. It has an incredible breadth of range that should make it a perfect Track & Field lens. Until I decide to leap, Topaz Gigapixel AI has my back. 🙂