Canon 5D Mark III with my 500L f4 lens handheld @ 1/1000, f16, ISO 400, + 2/3 exposure compensation.

Because the Snowy was a bit forward to the left in the frame, I cropped to a more fitting composition frame.

Cropping the sky behind/to the right of the owl to attempt the usual rectangular format would have necessitated clipping the wings.

I could also have "created" more sky into the left of the frame in Photoshop by expanding the canvas, but I opted to work with what I had and cropped to a more squarish frame.

At f16, when I lightened up the sky, a lot of dust bunny spots appeared. I used the heal brush to eliminated the majority. I despeckled the sky in hopes of removing the remainder that I missed.

Happy New Year 2017

Bonne année 2017,

Mike