yellowcrowniftoff

Hi Justin, I'm not much help as I struggle with Photoshop elements myself. But, first I would suggest a tighter crop. Get rid of the sign and reflections on the right, all they do is distract. This should also let you reduce the amount of bright water in the image. I am sure there are others who can tell you better means of correcting the big hot spot, but I would use the magic wand to select the area then use levels or the brightness control to reduce the hot spot. Also, your focus seems to be back on the birds body not its head. Keep those eyes in focus as best you can. I use the 55-250mm lens and find it to be nice and sharp if the focus in on. Thanks for sharing. Hope to see morel

quote]how do i rid the photo of the exposure from the light in the water.[/quote]

The best way to deal with something like this is to avoid it when taking the original shot. A basic of shooting wild birds is an awareness of the surroundings. I would not personally attempt to "fix" such a problem in post processing - it would take far too much time and effort to convincingly repair the large hotspot with cloning or any other tool.

Justin,
Looking at this I think it is not really possible to do much to correct the original image in Photoshop. I am not familiar with either the Rebel T5i or Elements so cannot give you any help there.
This is way over exposed in various areas, what exposure mode were you using?

A belated welcome to NPN Justin, this looks like a tough one to fix in post processing because the bright area looks so blown out. But you could try by reducing just the highlights in a curves adjustment. I hope you will contribute by commenting on others photos as well, by critiquing others photographers it usually helps you to become more discerning of your own work as well helping the others on the forum to improve.

Justin I agree that the bright white blowout and structure detract. But I do like the bird.

lucy