Total judging points: 26
Judge's Comments:
1. This is an interesting study in contrasts. The light areas of the background tend to pull the viewer's eye away from the bright yellow of the leaves, particularly the leaf behind the leaf on the left. This judge suggests darkening the light areas of the background, particularly those areas on the left and in the center.
2. What I like about this photo is how the photographer has kept this composition elegantly simple, with only two leaves as the main focus. I also like how the photographer used a relatively shallow depth of field to keep the leaves in the background softly blurred. And perhaps the photographer darkened the background slightly to further increase the contrast between foreground and background. Whether by design or good fortune, we see just enough of the leaves in the background to appreciate the scene without them being a distraction. I also like that the photograph introduced a slight diagonal into the image with how the branchlet is placed.
The only thing I might want to improve in this image would be the color saturation on the yellow leaves. There seems to be some glare on the leaves, which could possibly be eliminated with a polarizer. Failing that, the photographer might experiment with reducing the brightness of the highlights on the leaves to see if that would make them pop a bit more.