Is there anything I’m doing, that I should or shouldn’t do?
The first thing I would suggest is to watch your settings. Your statue shot that doesn't show all the details is partly down to using a slow shutter speed (assuming it was shot hand held and not on a tripod) and partly to diffraction issues caused by too small an aperture. 1/25th shutter speed is pretty slow and camera shake is likely at that speed, if you had bumped it to 1/125th or faster you would have been much better off. Your aperture of f/29 is way too small for a crop camera unless you are desperate for maximum depth of field. Once you get past about f/11 the image will start to get gradually softer as diffraction kicks in, by f/29 that softness will be quite noticeable. Had you selected 1/125th shutter speed that would have given you about f/11 aperture and solved both problems.
On the duck shot, it is slightly soft because you went the other way. The camera was in action mode so set the fastest shutter speed it could, which was 1/2000th, but that involved the aperture being wide open at f/5.6. That lens has a reputation for being a bit soft, especially at the extremes of its focal range and wide open. Allowing it to stop down to f/8 would have helped, and given a bit more depth of field to allow for the ducks size and movement. Shutter speed does need to be quite fast for birds in flight, but 1/1000th would be plenty and allow f/8.
Unless I’m out to do some kind of dark room-like effect (dodging or burning in, for example) I avoid photoshopping. I try to let the camera do the work. If I can’t get it right, with the camera, I’m doing something wrong. The only downside to that, is sometimes I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. Which is why I’m here.
That isn't really the case, photography has always been a two stage process, even back in the film days. Shoot the best image you can in the camera, then use that as the starting point for the darkroom work or, with digital, the post processing.
There are countless ways of improving even a "perfect" image from the camera. However well you take the shot, it can be significantly improved upon 98% of the time with editing. Cameras are very limited in what you get, if the scene has quite a low dynamic range you can't "get that right in camera" and there will likely be a stop or so left untouched at each end of the histogram, resulting in an image with no real brights or darks and looking a little flat. A simple tweak of levels will add significant punch to that image and bring it to life. Nothing was done wrong at the taking stage, it had to be done in editing, just as we did decades ago in the darkroom by choosing the grade of paper to print on.
Appreciate it.
The 18-55mm lens I used for that shot, has a stabilizer switch. Thanks. 
