highkey snowy owl

[allanrube]

The fog had not quite left the other day when I shot this guy in a tree. I took many shots last Thursday; this was my favorite.

D300s 600VR with 1.4tc 1/200 at f7.1 iso 200

[stuart wanuck]

Lovely image

[Nancy Bell]

Wow! The white on white is very dramatic. You captured an excellent pose with those piercing yellow eyes looking at the camera, as well as great feather detail. Perfect minimal perch. You might consider cropping a bit from the left and adding a bit to the right to add more space at the tail.

[Neil Nourse]

Beautiful shot Alan.

I want to see one of these some day soon....

Neil

[Craig Kerr]

Your exposure is perfect, like the birds expression, love those eye's

[denise ippolito]

Allan, I love this one! The pose and the high key BG are lovely.

[Steven Kersting]

Lovely! Where was this?
Only thing I would do would be reduce the white output level to 245 instead of 255....

[arash_hazeghi]

excellent pose and nice details, whites are exposed properly.

[allanrube]

Lovely! Where was this?
Only thing I would do would be reduce the white output level to 245 instead of 255....

Massachusetts Beach north of Boston.

The white does look better on my save tiff. Resizing and saving for web sometimes does this - not sure why.

[Terry Olmsted]

Wonderful image! Your handling of the whites was perfect!
They have arrived in Seattle, but I have yet to find one with such a beautiful
setting/perch and with its eyes open!

[Dan Brown]

Great capture, Allan! The whites are just like you and I like them! Sweet!

[Jim Crosswell]

Excellent image Allan! I like the pose, perch, and eyes.

[Mike Milicia]

Wonderful image, Alan!

Hope to get a chance with these guys in the New Year.

[Gary Esman]

Excellent shot Allan, really shows how white they are!

Gary.

[Sandesh R.Dhareshwar]

Excellent exposure and details

[Troy Lim]

Superb shot Allan...love the high key feel.

[Steven Kersting]

I kept coming back to this picture... I like it so much. But I kept feeling it could be "pushed further" as a high key image. So I took a stab at it. I realize what you posted was a "high key result" and not necessarily an attempt at a high key image.
Here's my result attempting for "high key". Hope you don't mind.

I basically just removed almost all of the reds and painted over the branch with white in "soft light" mode.

[allanrube]

Steven, I don't minds at all. Like most members here, I like to see what others would do with my posts. I don't have set formulas, and what I settle on before posting might not be what I would like best a few days later.

I do like your re-post. Did you remove the reds with color balance or another method?

Some people might light my color better, but I think everyone would agree what you did to the branch was a definite improvement.

I did make another copy myself following what Nancy Bell suggested - adding more room on the right and cutting a bit off the left. (Thanks Nancy.)

[Steven Kersting]

I think I just did a hue/saturation adjustment in PS. I also did a new layer B/W conversion and added it in "multiply" mode (*I think*) and erased the eyes. And then the "soft light" layer for the branch.