The duck is tack sharp. Blur in the reflection and background just serve to give separation. You just nailed the whole thing!
Great job.

You did one in July that I think was called Seductive Bride, wherein some soft focus was employed, but parts of the photo were sharp. It allowed separation of the background from the subject. You can use color, exposure or focus to give your shot a feeling of depth. Reviewing your work I see you like to experiment. I'd like to see what you can do with this set up to draw more attention to your subject.

Nine times out of ten I would choose the color rendition. I love color. But in this image the color doesn't enhance any important detail or part of the shot. You intentionally blurred out the background, apparently to separate it from the subject and diminish it. It was a good move. Go with it. The color of the trees draws my eye to them, and so it is a distraction for me. Better to continue to diminish the background by going to B/W or monochrome IMAO.

Nicely done.

I particularly like the second shot, where the color models the form of the lizard and adds visual interest. I notice that the B/W version looks flat in comparison. I think the best B/W conversions all have two qualities. They have lots of contrast, which this shot has, and grey scale gradation between black and white to model form and add depth.

Not so much post. Minor contrast, exposure tweaks and a little vibrance for pop. These are pretty much de rigueur since I shoot in RAW. Also minor sharpening. The shot was made with a Canon 70-200mm f2.8, which is very sharp (And oppressively heavy) on it's own. Sorry about the very late answer. Had a bad spot physically and was away from the craft for a while.

A very nice shot deserving accolades to the photographer for good lighting technique and choice of background screen; and kudos to the model for her flexibility, grace, and conditioning. I would like to see more separation from the background; and I find that the bright light behind the matrix of the screen is distracting. These are small details, but that's where the devil is. Possibly the difference between a very fine shot and a truly great one. This really has the potential to be a great one.

That just scares the hell out of me! Good shot though.

A walk through John Chestnut Park along the coast of Tarpon Lake (Tampa/Clearwater Florida) revealed these interesting denizens of an otherwise urban area.

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All good, sharp shots. A little subject motion blur in frame #4 adds interest to me. I like it best.

Dark is her style, which I tried to copy. You have to look at the downloads. You also need to reduce the size so you can see the whole frame at one time (Cmd -)(Cntl _).

Not MY USUAL style. I don't like the Perfect petal flower sprayed with water droplets that is typically exhibited. BLAH! But I was motivated by a tutorial on KelbyOne by Melanie Kern-Favilla to give her method a try. What I came up with would probably make her spasm, but see what you think of my ugly flower?. Available light, Canon 70-200mm lens, 5DMk3. It was fun.

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At last an honest voice.

It could be that you are saving all the layers. If you make sure to flatten the image before saving, your file size should be greatly reduced. And if I am understanding you correctly, you are using your applications after the P/S edit. Try using apps like portrait professional first. Keep in mind that everything you do in the apps can be done in P/S without affecting the file size. Then flatten and export to jpg at a quality level of about 8 and add a little sharpening in that step. You will not notice any loss of quality and you can export at any size you want. I routinely drop my 25 or more megabyte RAW files to 8 X 10 and have no problems with it

Eleven internationally known competitors fashioned a total of 1000 tons of beach sand into sculptures that occupied 21000 square feet of tented space. At the end of the festival it all went back to the sun bathers beach. It seemed a shame to dismantle it, but it required perpetual maintenance and only one guy was from Tampa/Clearwater! Feel free to critique the photo.