4 Real or fake Log practice

For this assignment .
My aim is to produce a book/magazine cover that will tell the story of the content.
Using my skills to manipulate the image to make it stand out.
Title. My tilted heading : Wild life of Borneo close up.  
Subject. Wild life
Theme. focus and close ups.
Ordinance. Nature lovers and wild life photographers.

Planning;

This was at first , new territory, proving some difficulty in selecting the right metrical. Although I has something in mind. The fast amount of images to put the picture together, gave some what more of a challenge then i wished for.

Fist I chose the Horn Bill. Took away it back ground, The confused trees.

Giving some thought over a few days , Going through many more photographs . Then , Simplicity came to mind. So I worked on this. 

Using eraser and the clone tool. 

My next step ; Look for other animals in photos to ad, that compliment without looking unnatural.
At this point , no suitable  subjects that matched lighting. So I took away the blue background and layered the Hornbill into this photo:

By reducing the Horn Bill and cutting the branches. This pleasing compliment and right scale in size came together. adding text in 4 layers.

by adding each layer, I took this what would have been my final. Re sized to 600 x 900  ( 8.5 x 11 )  Magazine average size , Producing a new canvas . Adding some texture and colour. making it the back ground. reducing the main image , then using the clone . Puling the image off . Over the background.  Allowing a margin at the base for extra text.

After all this work. My tutor did not find this impacting enough. Its not what was expected. looking at other work , I wonder where my photography is going. So Now to start over again. And Make another image look Fake .