What a beautiful image! Light, colours, sharpness, detail, shooting angle, eye contact, pose and Bg are all fantastic. If anything I wiah to see the bird slightly more to the right and a bit off the top.
Michael, good low angle, and bath time sure is throwing around the water. Sharp where it counts, and if this were mine, I would remove the lower catchlight.
Lovely background
Great action
Perfect exposure and sharpness. That 300 f2.8 and 1/4 tc was the perfect choice.
Agree with Ofer's comp suggestion and Stuart's observation.
Killer sharp. EXP good but WHITEs bright??? Water looks a bit magenta on Firefox, more naturally blue on (as I understand it) non-color managed Chrome (where the WHITEs look much better, i.e., not too bright). Like the wing position better in #2 of your e-mail but this one has the splashes.
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Thanks for all the great suggestions. Made the recommended changes suggested by everyone. Being the "Poster Child For Photoshop Lessons" I would love feedback on my results.
Wonderful action shot. I like the OP better than the second image, both for the better splash and for the saturated color. Because of the great splash, I wouldn't crop much from the top of the OP - maybe just a slivver. Red channel is just a tiny bit hot in the OP - pushing low 250's in a few spots - so could be toned down just a bit; but the second image looks a little dull by comparison. I'm sure Clemens is right that the blues are over the top, but they sure make the image sing. (PS, I'm viewing on Chrome.)