Barn Owl in Flight - Second Try with PP

[Loi Nguyen]

Thank you for all the good suggestions you folks gave me on my first post in this forum. I have incorporated many of the suggestions in the PP of this second pic of a barn owl in flight. There was an ugly barbed wire in the bottom of the photo, which I cloned out in PS Element 11. I cropped the image slightly on the left side of the bird, not very much. I used mainly the Spot Removal tool for the wire and the Stamp tool with opacity in the 40-50% (I need to learn how to use this tool more effectively).

I spotted this owl on the side of the road 2 weels ago. I doubled back and parked on the other side of the road to give him some room. I had about 1 min to set up my tripod when he took off.

1DX
500f4 II + 1.4X III
1/8000
f5.6
ISO-1000 (no time to reduce ISO)
0 EV, Evaluative metering
Early morning sun, about 8AM.

Appreciate your feedback!

Thnk you.

Loi

[gail bisson]

Ho Loi,
This image has so much potential...
The owl is beautiful and tack sharp.
Great light and BG.
You need to clone out the dust bunny above the owl's right wing and you have cloned out the fence but left the stem cut in half with the top half floating "magically in the air"! You need to clone out all the branches and stems from the bottom of the frame! Don't forget the one below the right wing.
You seized a great opportunity and did well.
Gail

[Mike Veltri]

Very nice image, and I agree with Gail's suggestions to do a bit more work on the image.

[Karl Egressy]

Nice image but I agree, it needs some more fine tuning.

[Dan Busby]

Very nice Loi. Beautiful shot of this species, nice detail, lighting, wing position and head angle. A bit of work cleaning up the dust spot, broken stem and reducing the few stems in the lower section and this would really pop.

[Loi Nguyen]

Thank you everyone! Here is another attempt to clean up on of the stems. Without stems, I feel compelled to crop a little tighter. Perhaps leaving some fo the stems might be the best compromise, but then the PP is a bit harder. At the moment, I'm working from a lap top and still learning PS Element, so will need to defer that until I get a monitor and am more effective with PS. Please let me know what you think. I have t say this is an awesome forum and you all are awesome! Thanks to Artie who directed me here!

[arash_hazeghi]

excellent pose and details, love that smooth BG with nice colors!

[PhilCook]

Repost has addressed all the cloning/spot removal issues, now looking very nice, great front on capture and color, I feel a little more sharpening on the head would make this even better

[Jonathan Ashton]

Well done, love the detail and I like the original but would agree a little tidying up here and there. The repost is also good but I like the feel of the environment in the original.
I am hoping to get a similar shot soon, I have a barn owl on my patch but it is still a little too dark for me at the moment.