Yes, much better. You can improve even more in some details: (1) to make the DOF more shallow, you need to blur the fence layer a little bit, so the main plane will be on the face of the horse. (2) Instead of Gaussian blur, you should use lens blur, which have the blur pattern similar to the real lense, and don't forget to add a small amount of noise, (3) in photography, you should avoid the continuous horizon because it cut your photo into 2 pieces, so you can make one more layer of something to disrupt this horizon (I mean the fence)

Looked almost photography, except the house, the part behind the horse should be blurred, instead of the right part.

Great portrait! I agree with rocketdog85, but it's difficult to be solved because the tighter crop will reduce the warm atmosphere for the face (the pink coat is very fit in this situation, I think)

you can do that to ANY contest, just put the source somewhere and make it disappeared, lol

I think you need to work more on extracting the target and shadowing them in the context

nice try, but I think the higher tree branch should be behind the wing or you can delete that one. Moreover, the bush also needs the shadow as the man standing in front. The opacity of the tree is quite low, so it's not stick to the scenery. GL

the best so far

Now it looked like a painting. Wonderful!

well deserved the first place, congratulation!

I see the glowing effect in some areas makes the composition of this robot less connective, especially the foot. Overall, it's quite good

Wow, congratulation on your first place. I finished my dragon almost the same time that you submitted this work (I intended to name it as Candy Dragon, then I had to change to Fire Dragon because of this one, lol)

the background is quite boring but I like the red tone. Nice construction, GL

Author, the reflection is not right, just the reflection of the image underneath the heel is enough

'You don't love a woman because she is beautiful, but she is beautiful because you love her.'. She's obviously beautiful, so how can you interprete this quote? However, this is the great portrait photo, well done.

waw, nice composition and color tone. I like it. Good luck, author

Congratulation!!!

The blending is smooth and the tone is very reasonably, well done.

The shadow of the second dolphin from the left is not fit to the context, it's rather be on the left of the dolphin than being like this. However, it looked great!

It's so funny )

Even though the blend is not very good, but the concept and overall look is superb. Well done!