Your edits look better than the originals, for sure. As is common, the SOOC images have a gentle tone curve and minimally saturated color, which is a GOOD THING if later editing and enhancement is going to be done to the images. Your edits seem to me a tad warm in terms of tone/white balance point, but perhaps that's the artistic direction you want to go in. My main C&C would be on the backgrounds...most of the compositions have too much background shown, and do not emphasize the foreground flora quite as much as would be optimum.
As to the Beginner's Forum sticky which says, "Just a friendly reminder that the Beginners Forum is not supposed to have photo threads. If you wish to post photos for critique, feedback and to show off then please head down to the Galleries. We've a range of subjects, including a General section that accepts anything and also the Just for Fun gallery (which is for anything that you don't want critique on). All the galleries (barring the Just for Fun) are open to critique and are populated by the majority of our members. If you want skilled feedback no matter your level of skill then to the galleries you should head ."
....I would not consider this "a photo thread"...no photos were posted in the thread, just a link to his Flickr pages. And imagine, The Photo Forum, a place where beginners are not supposed to post any photos in the Beginner's Forum. I mean, WTF? That's just asking for hassles that are not needed. I mean, God forbid, beginners coming in here and posting those pesky photos...the nerve! But wait...the OP did not actually POST any images...the member just joined today, and is already getting an extremely snarky response. Not the kind of response that will build any good will toward this place. It might make some sense to reconsider this NO PHOTOS policy in the Beginner's Forum, for obvious reasons.
