I spotted this Ural owl in a forest on Hokkaido, Japan during my last photo tour there. I had never seen one before. The original background was very busy and distracting with multiple branches, so I used Topaz Mask AI to select the bird and the branch on which it was perched. I then replaced the background with a snowy forest I also photographed on Hokkaido. To make the owl look like it belonged in the scene, I had to fill it with a bluish-white color at 20% opacity. I photographed the new background forest during a snowfall, and the owl had to match the same kind of soft diffusion lighting. My settings were 1/400, f/5.0, and 1250 ISO. I used a 500mm Canon f/4 telephoto from a tripod.
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