Nice shots overall, Jay -- good stuff -- but it sounds like you want a little more hard critique to tease out potential improvements? My 2c:
- Peacock - Interesting crop, but not to my taste. Far left vegetation is distracting. Bird feels too tight to right. Personally I'd try a portrait crop closer to the head and sacrifice the (rather uninteresting, poor bird) body. Nice and sharp at screen res with good color though. This has most impact of the shots presented, especially if re-cropped.
- Tiger - Nice attempt but OOF cage/obstruction detracts. More problematic is the shadow over the nose. I would put this in my "try again" pile - reject for sharing except family. Good excuse to go back and shoot more!
- Bear - Pretty nice. Cage/obstruction again, but less problematic than for Tiger. Crop too tight on left, for me. Maybe at feet too.
- Crane - Doesn't "pop". Bird seems dull - some stronger white here might help. Pose is strange and doesn't really work for me. Crop puts bird awkwardly slightly off center but equally not far enough to the side - and the wrong side, if off-center intended - so it would look like the bird is walking into the shot rather than going out.
- Fireworks - Could pop a little more to be more compelling (sky doesn't seem true black), but very nicely done and quite balanced as-is.
- Mountains - Doesn't work for me. Mountains are all in shadow and ill-defined. Mirror effect is ok, but overall effect is too plain and not interesting. Sky seems over-processed compared to rest of scene - though saturation of trees is also strong, so maybe you just globally over-saturated. If you have Lightroom, clarity might help the mountains a bit, but it won't change simply the wrong time of day. Nice and sharp at screen res though!
- Red panda - like the bear, pretty nice overall. Not "strong", but fine.
Hopefully you'll find this constructive, as intended. Keep going! :-)
