Great grey owls are majestic birds, and that's what I wanted to capture here in Alberta, Canada. At a frame rate of 20 fps, and the camera settings of 1/3200, f/7.1, and 4000 ISO, I was able to freeze the action with the outstretched wings. Nothing shows the elegance and majesty of these birds more than their large, beautiful wings fully extended. The problem in the original image, though, was that the forest background wasn't sharp. I used a Canon 100-500mm telephoto, and by focusing on the owl the background turned out to be soft. It wasn't completely blurred, which would have been acceptable, rather it was clearly defined but less than sharp. Recognizing this at the time of shooting, I took a second shot of just the background, in focus, and then I replaced the out of focus trees with the sharp rendition. I think this made a much better image. I did the replacement by cloning, in Photoshop, from one picture to another with both images open on my desktop.
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