OH WOW

#s 4 & 5 make me laugh - I'd love to know what he was thinking

# 2 is glorious - the two birds are great and the water droplets just add to it

His dinner certainly took some dealing with

can't help with putting in clouds as a layer - me no use Photoshop and you can't do that sort of thing in Aperture

Sorry - don't like the wash - the blue is very unnatural - go back to the grey and carry on ' playing' with it - you should manage to get some different textures into it [ this is where I mess about with Brightness , contrast , highlights and shadows and can usually get something in ].

Be careful though and make sure that you are working in non-destructive ways as you will probably need several goes at this .

The alternative is to shoot on these sort of flat grey days [ do I ever get anything else up here ? ] with a CPL on and that can help the sky.

Certainly removing the cable and arial have helped a lot.

As folk know I'm no expert , but I'm slowly getting to grips with pp work and find that just ' playing ' with what you have / know , can sometimes give you a better result than you thought was possible.

#s 1 and 3 I like - yes a bit chocolate boxy /snapshot but they are my type

#1 - sky is a bit flat - I'd try and take out the teeny TV arial and the power cable [ ? ] a bit fiddly but the cable is intrusive Don't think that the greenery in the top R hand corner is doing anything for it so try cropping to lose a lot of that very dull sky .

# 3- has much more punch and is a favourite type shot of mine , however the gate could do with a bit more emphasis- it's getting lost in that vibrant greenery [ and I love the different greens ] .

Sunlight ?

Where do you get sunlight ??

My Tamron 18-250 [ was Mike P's ] is my travel lens - saves me having to swap lenses [ BTW Pentax Expert note the spelling of the plural of lens ] when away from a safe place, thanks to my dodgy hands and lack of feeling. I've never used it above 200 so can't comment about the quality loss . OK it's heavier than my other lenses but it saves me a lot of worry.

Remember the South Sea Bubble ?

Personally - I like the first one - the wee bird is nicely in proportion with the leaves [ ? ] on the reeds - it gives a better idea of his size .

I think the third is a real cracker

suspect it's alcohol talk

Does that really surprise you ? - I mean we are talking on the PUF

Why not just get an external big Monitor for the laptop ?