As I've stated, I was aiming to make this piece surreal.
The parrot is the abnormal being and I wanted the landscape to reflect the presence of the unusual bird, being transported into this world.
If you have any tutorials on how to go about the wrong shadows, please link me.
Kind regards,
-Matt
The problem is your image doesn't really fall into the surrealism category, it's literally a composite with different scaling applied to pieces plus some desaturation/filters added to change the tone of the image.
I actually agree with fisicx, the shadows are wrong and you should be able to see why just by looking at some photo's.....you say you do photography on your site so go back through your pictures and take notice of how the shadows fall from a SINGLE light source (ie the sun in this case). Your image has a person with multi directional shadows and both the person and the bird have shadows that take no reference of the shape the shadow is being created from. You're also going to run into issues due to the original image light sources being different between your parrot and the person and as such this then transfers to your composited image, flipping the direction of the person isn't going to change the fact the light is originally coming from (relative to camera) the front on the person and more to the rear on the parrot... and yes I can tell this from looking at your pictures, I've done photography as a hobby for over 20 years and I do 3D rendering for my work so I work with light sources A LOT.
Actually having read the webpage showing how you created the image I would actually go so far as to say you don't fully understand all the areas you are highlighting (ie bold text) in the post and I would recommend further research into these areas, if this is what your tutors (you say you are a graphic design student) are teaching you then I would recommend looking at some outside sources too..
The glow round the trees makes no sense, it looks more like poor photoshop skills where you couldn't cut close enough to the trees before shading the sky a different colour.
The beam of light on the parrot bends when it hit's the feet area, it's almost like you applied an outer glow filter to the parrot, that's not how light works, especially if it's coming for a 'spot light' it's more like a cone is coming from the light source to the floor causing a circle/ellipse (generally) which is then affected by shadows caused by the light hitting the object within the cone and causing differences in the intensity of the 'hot spot' on the floor.
Now you might think what I've said is harsh but you asked for feedback so I judge the work based on what is shown to me. Now I try to be gentle but to be honest being in the design industry requires a thick skin and the ability to take onboard critiques from clients who will have set visions in mind so to put it blunty if you can't get get used to it early on your might as well give up trying to get into design if that's your intention.
PS I'm a hell of a lot more critical of my own work when I'm giving it the once over before a client sees it.