This one was taken in Leesburg, FL on a cloudy day. I had my D300S close by with the 300mm on it. I decided to shoot a few pictures. After a few minutes he decided to fly off and join his mate on another tree witch had a much better perch. I got some shots of the 2 of them together that I will post later.
Great looking owl! I've always had trouble getting close to one of these. If this were mine, I would remove the twig poking the owl in the neck and clone out the white patch above the head.
Great owl picture. I have never seen anything but a barn owl in the wild. Very sharp, good eye contact, good light. On my iPad, the BG seems a bit too bright. Agreed with James regarding the white flower and the twig near the head.
I think you did pretty well with this owl, Mike. The twig doesn't bother me at all. I think I would lower the saturation of the BG green some b/c it's so powerful it almost detracts a little from the lovely owl. While I don't often like to make alteration to my pictures, I think in this case I would probably work on cloning out the white blob by the bird's head. In this particular case, it's quite distracting. I like the composition you chose and the bird's exposure and sharpness looks good. I like the fact that you can see it's talons. Maybe as an alternative crop a little more room top and left.