Taken literally at the crack of dawn, this Snowy Owl is proof that you can't always "balance your whites" when treating a digital image.
Canon's 100-400L f4.5-5.6 lens handheld @ 1/1250, f5.6, ISO 400, + 1 1/3 exposure compensation.
Horizon straightened then cropped to a 12 x 16 framing format. One snow/lens reflection removed behind my signature.
Is there noise in this image - at full framing size? Of course there is! This image was much darker. When adding contrast and brightness, extra noise was created - remember, the sun had barely pierced the horizon!
Noise reduction applied. Even after sharpening, I despeckled the background as usual to reduce noise even more.
I lightened up the eyes a bit.
Cheers,
Mike