To me..It really doesn`t matter if you have shown the same species before. Each photo is different in my eyes and a pleasure to look at As for the first photo, nature doesn`t always give us a perfect background all the time.
Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda
Thanks for the comments everyone, even if this particular trio of photos is not anywhere near the 'cream of the crop' for this trip.
Rik, thanks for the suggestion. I have gotten other good suggestions from forum members using levels/masking/blending, etc. that I definitely want to learn and use. I will be going back to each picture I deem worthy and reprocess them again with all the new tricks I will have learned. I will then put them in my gallery and in a photobook. However, for now, think of these pictures as round one of the processing.
I like your technique and have saved the link to study when round one is complete.