2 photos in need of critique

During my trip to SeaWorld in Florida, I shot these two pictures.
The first one is of a group of Pink Flamingos and the next during a Shamu show.
Please provide me with critiques about how you would improve these shots.

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for me...

1) tad underexposed, which i tend to do, too. for me, underexposing allows richer colors. so, use your "curves" in pp and lighten the midtones a bit. then, punch the saturation to a level that almost looks overdone. then, a couple clicks of contrast, and a little sharpening.....viola!

2) tighter crop...maybe vertical. you seem to have a little dead space on the right and left.

overall, not bad. play around with it and repost what you find out. the experimentation in pp is most of the fun, imo.

What message are you attempting to convey in these images? Every image tells a story, unless it's a snapshot. Then again, some snapshots are lucky enough to tell stories.

Another way of asking this question is: what was going through your mind when you took the shots? Was it "Flamingoes!" [Snap] and "Lady on Orca!" [Snap]? Neither of these images, I am sorry to say, indicates that you had a plan. They're snapshots.

In the first, it looks like you were trying to get "Sleeping Flamingoes". To make this an engaging image would have been tough under any circumstances. I mean, sometimes they're cute, but sleeping animals? However, you cut two of them off and there are distractions in the foreground and background. I would also clone out the tags. If I were in this situation, I would have tried to get the curve of the neck of just one of them. The light, back lit as it was, could have made this a dramatic shot.

In the orca shot, the primary focus is the woman on the orca (unless you happen to be an orca). You'll never get the orca's eye -- black on black, as it is. But you could at least get the performer's face. A shot from the back is not anything to write home about. Granted, you're in a seat in the stadium and have limited options for getting a better location. Nevertheless, there are two things that you could do in the future: (1) wait for better positioning of the performers or (2) record in you mind's eye this time where the best seats were and sit there the next time (preferably out of the splash zone).

+ 1 on the underexposed - i take it they never wanted there picture taken

And on the second, would be better if there was more room above and the subject is moving into that direction - just a few ideas to try

are you shooting in manual?

sometimes my camera lies to me and some of my shots come underexposed also!

Cosha wrote in post #8389024
+ 1 on the underexposed - i take it they never wanted there picture taken

And on the second, would be better if there was more room above and the subject is moving into that direction - just a few ideas to try

are you shooting in manual?

sometimes my camera lies to me and some of my shots come underexposed also!

The Flamingoes were in a very shady area. LOL about them not wishing to have their picture taken. I did not want to use the flash to compensate for the shade. I could have use the levels to bring more light to the scene.
On the second picture, I wanted to have some of the underwater whale's body as part of the picture and that apparently made it look that more space over the girl would look better. I am not sure.
I was shooting with preference on shutter speed (500) in order to minimize the possible focusing problem using as I was the Sigma 70-300 lens without tripod.
Thank you all for your comments, keep them coming.