Total judging points: 20
Judge's Comments:
1. The colors of this image ooze "autumn" in brown and orange. The sharp foreground and blurred background are appropriate, but the colorful center-of-interest is almost lost in the similarly colorful background. The judge suggests masking the in-focus foreground and "taking some color out of" the background.
2. What I love most about this image is the bokeh effect in the background, where the indistinct colors and patterns might make a pleasing abstract image in themselves. But even being out of focus, the similarity in tonality between the foreground and background causes them to blend together.
Had the opportunity existed at the time, I might have tried shifting the shooting angle (and perhaps the focal length) to place a small cluster of the leaves entirely in front of the darker and less interesting tree trunk, thus making the leaves stand out more against a distinctly different background.