Intense backlighting

A lot of wonderful pictures came out of the first snowy owl workshop (the next one starts Sunday evening), but this one has to be my favorite. As much as I like white on white, when a white bird is photographed against a blue sky it's pretty dramatic. Add to that intense backlighting, and the result is incredible. We had one day of blue sky, and we took advantage of it in the morning and in the afternoon until sunset. This shot was made about 9am. The fact that the bird was very close to my shooting position -- about 20 feet -- and I was using a 120mm focal length (I had zoomed back on the 100 - 400mm telephoto), it's remarkable this turned out sharp. The owl is in an out of the frame in less than a second when it makes a turn, and all you can do is hold down the AI servo button (continuous tracking), try and keep the bird in the frame without cutting off the wing tips, and hope for the best. There are a lot of throw-aways, but this one worked. I love the backlighting on the white feathers, and the wing spread is graphically beautiful. Unfortunately, my composition was too low compared to the bird's position in the frame and the sun was cut in half. So, I used Photoshop to rebuild the sun and add some sky at the top of the frame. I wasn't sure I could do it because of the subtle tones in the flare around the sun, but I am gratified with the result. The settings were 1/3200, f/13, and the auto ISO gave me 320 ISO.