What a great birthday present! And a what a way to show how good a present it is! 3, 6 and 7 are the pick of a very good set for me, though I like 2 a lot as well. And the first one...it looks like a very good flash, and you seem to have got the hang of it pretty fast.

They don't look too bad to me either...though the WB looks a bit out. I think they could look even better run through Topaz Adjust or a similar plug-in...

I like it, unusual teatment for a doggy shot! Is she really those colours, or is it just the HDR?

Far from boring, a very nice shot. I thought of a gas ring, too.

1 and 3 for me, great shots! I haven't had the Tamron 90mm out in ages, hardly any bugs here, which is both a blessing and a curse...

Great shot.

Very good demonstration of the benefits of RAW IMO. By their very nature JPG's are never going to give you the same latitude in PP, which is why I shoot exclusively in RAW. If they are just snaps, where I could have shot JPG's, it only takes a minute to produce a JPG from Lightroom, but if they are shots where I need to recover highlight or shadow detail, I have more options in processing. I have tried aerial shots using JPG, and they just can't cope with the amount of processing needed to get rid of haze. The histogram is extremely narrow on these shots, sometimes less than a quarter of what you would get on the ground, and there is just not enough information in the file to fix it without messing up the image.

Another benefit of leaving the camera set to RAW is I don't ever forget to switch formats.

Another vote for the first one, I really like it. Very nicely done.

The second one is too fuzzy to work I think, and the colours look a bit nauseating....

Great shot, lovely composition, and I love the colours on the bird. It could perhpas do with the exposure being reduced a touch, and the riverbank darkened a bit, but that may be my monitor. It's an excellent shot. What's the bird's name in laymans terms?

Excellent shots, especially the first one which is superb.