Great advice above. When composing your picture you want to follow the rule of thirds. It is covered pretty well in section 6 of post #111 and section 2 of post #1 in Jolenesdad's thread....
Generally speaking you want to put the animals eye close to one of the intersections. Also you want more space in front of the animal. So if he's looking left you put him on the right side of the picture. If he's looking up you put him towards the bottom. Like was previously mentioned, you aways want more space in front of where the subject is looking.
Here is how I would compose those pictures. Notice the eyes are pretty close to the intersecting points.
These are a 4:3 aspect ratio. If going with a 16:9 aspect in ratio (how phones usually take pictures) I prefer how happyclucker cropped the dog showing more of the stick.
As far as editing goes..... less is more in my opinion. I like that nothing you've added is over the top, just some subtle changes. It's easy to go overboard increasing clarity and saturation. It doesn't take long and you end up with an unnatural looking image. A good photo taken in good light should need little to no editing. Though most all images can benefit from small adjustments.
95% of my editing is what is called dodging and burning. This is simply brightening and darkening specific parts of the picture. I like to slightly brighten the subject and slightly darken the background which really helps make the subject stand out.
Yes. When someone in a picture is looking at something, there needs to be space for them to "look into," if that makes sense. If Finn were looking down at the ground, you'd need a little bit of space under him in the picture, but since his focus would be so close to himself, the space could be less.
I have seen sooo many pictures of people who were looking right at the edge of the print... As work, sometimes we'd set the print on a table and put something next to the print (a paperclip, a chocolate, whatever) for them to look at. Oh, the stories we made up! Well, it made us laugh and it passed the time.
